The Maverick Marketer Blog

I’m sitting here listening to my iTunes music collection… ripped from my own CD collection from ‘the old days’ when I was in college… having a bit of an online marketing revelation I want to share with you.

It’s stunning for me to have the the memories and emotions flood back. It’s the surest form of time travel that I know of. I just listened to some old Clash that I listened to when I was 13, sitting in my mom’s apartment talking trash with my buddies in 8th grade.

Nothing like some old school British punk rock to liven up your day.

I haven’t walked in those shoes for over twenty four years. And what’s funnier and ‘circle of life-ish’ is that my 13 year old is the one who asked me to burn these Clash songs on to his iPod. (we even found my first Walkman… and I had to show him how to put the cassette in… and the darn thing didn’t even attempt to work… dead as a paperweight).

I know, I know… I’ve got some kharma coming to me… my own teen years are knocking at my door looking to collect on old ‘rebel without a cause’ debts. Somebody save me. Is my name Earl?

But I’ll tell you this… putting on the Nirvana or Clash or Metallica from my bad hair days (yes, I had a mullet and flirted with grunge for a while) helps me to remember what it is like to be 13 and think everyone over 30 is a clueless automaton sold out to ‘The Man’.

Luckily, I have more than the hard stuff in my CD collection…

I also found some Michael Jones ‘Sunscapes’ piano, new age stuff that I was introduced to when I went to Supercamp as a 15 year old.

That put me in a state where I was ready to do anything and take on the world in a much more positive way (after all, I not only did ropes courses and easy math tips… but also met Tony Robbins and many other people who helped me turn my life around and come to my dear parents’ assistance. I’ll tell you more about that pivotal experience soon because we’re coming up on the 25th anniversary).

I used to listen to Sunscapes, George Winston, and several Windham Hill artists and collections when I wanted to write in college. I churned out many a ’semi-decent’ term papers to those sounds (as well as The Red Hot Chilli Peppers for variety).

But I also sat on my washing machine, staring at the wall, drinking just a little too much Jack Daniels while Guns And Roses blared at levels none of my neighbors could love for too long wondering why the women in my life at the time seemed to make a sport out of playing hacky sack with my heart (how’s that for sappy and melodramatic… just being true to the times, lol).

After being happily married for ten years (as of December 31, 2005) I can say it’s been a long time since I walked in THOSE unhappy single shoes as well.

Good thing, too. I almost became a monk.

Now my cars have doors that shut without shoe string and I drink single malt scotch in moderation (mostly). Heck, my SUV actually has heated and cooled seats… something that perhaps only those in the hotter states would appreciate right about now.

Sure beats roll starting a 1972 Volkswagen Bug on a January night in Vermont with hands so cold they burned on the metal.

Oh, and with all due respect to my friends who drink Jack Daniels… (Michel!) I would rather pour it into one of my old cars than drink it today. Though next time my 13 year old pesters me to have something the grown ups are drinking… I might give him a taste of Kentucky’s finest and buy myself a few more years of him thinking booze is revolting, lol. One bad hangover can ruin a flavor for life, I guess. Nothing personal to bourbon, folks.

Then again, one hangover and a series of bad decisions can make you stop drinking altogether for 7 years… which I’ve done also. Nothing funny about getting lost in a bottle. Lost a few friends there.

If you think this has nothing to do with marketing, consider that your customers come from a variety of walks of life. I don’t know about you, but my life has brought me down many different paths… some pretty bumpy and dark, some a blessing beyond anything I’d imagined.

When a subscriber writes me that they’re hocking their stuff and sending their wife off to work 3rd shift at some meaningless job so they can hang on to their dream… I know whereof they speak.

When a woman writes me of her life long depression lifting due to discovering EFT and sends me her book she wrote about her journey, I can relate and feel joy at her massive accomplishment.

Having lost my mother to cancer at the crazy young age of 56, I can pray for those who now worry for someone just holding on or mourn the loss of a love one in a way that I wish I couldn’t… but that is the journey we travel here on Earth and there are times when life won’t let us forget it.

In a differnet way, but also scary at times, when someone tells me they just retired from corporate America and want to do something, anything, online that will work and give them something to raise their surprisingly limited standard of living after a career of service.

Sure humbles the snot nosed 13 year old still rattling around deep in my psyche, that’s for sure.

But these days things are good for me…

This spring I’m taking my family on an 8 week RV trip across the country to my former stomping grounds in Vermont where I spent 17 years (it took me a few months in Texas to thaw out… lol). Aimee and I have family there and Hayden, Ethan and Sam miss their grandparents and extended family and friends. It’s interesting to me that when I was 10 my father and I traveled the US in an RV for one magical summer… and today I’m bringing home my family to see him… in an RV.

Can anyone play the Lion King ‘Circle of Life’ song now?

I’m bringing my Portable Empire on the road with me as my friend and rising star Pat O’Bryan would say. He’s a former broke blues guitarist who’se taken a big bite out of the Internet and shows no signs of slowing down. He is having a workshop in May that sold out in like 11 hours after he promoted it… at $5,000 a ticket for just 25 people.

But Pat and I could tell you what it’s like to feel like success is just a cruel joke that rich people play on folks who don’t seem to have a clue how to achieve it.

That’s a tough place to be… and I’m eternally grateful it was more like a bad dream than a permanent reality.. all of my successful friends now have at one point or another tasted that bitter place, too. Gives one hope, that’s for sure.

What is reality? What is the truth?

It depends on the shoes you are wearing.

Do you have holes in the toes or does Gucci carry you through the day?

No judgement either way… it’s not about that. I’d prefer nice shoes to blisters, thanks, and I think most would. Though sometimes life calls for steel toed shit kickers and other times you want to have ski boots.

My point is…we all live in our own worlds, lost in experiences that are at once unique to ourselves and at the same time share emotions that are common to all humanity.

I’ll grant you that if you’ve lived a pristine life where the only thing that got broken was a fine glass of crystal when the maid tipped it off the table… you may have a harder time identifying with someone who’s idea of success is being sober for more than a day and getting a paycheck once every few months to make bets on the ponies.

Somewhere in between is probably where your customer is and when you market to him or her your copy will be more powerful if you can really connect with what it is like to walk in familiar shoes.

I’m a probably a Maverick because I’ve lived around the world, both in the UK, Germany, and several states in the US from east to west coast and now in the sunbelt. I’ve been to the former Yugoslavia and walked barefoot in the blue Mediterranean sea back before the country split into fragments… and I’ve watched belly dancers in an upscale restaurant in Calgary, Canada.

I’ve driven a Pontiac Bonneville with no powersteering (nearly off the road) and I’ve sailed on a 51 ft yacht around Sausalito, cruising home in a Porshe 911 that took me 7 years to afford.

It doesn’t hurt that I’ve hauled logs working on a farm in a foster home (luckily only for a weekend… long story) and hooted and hollared with good friends in a straw floor country western bar sharing a couple buckets of beers.

There was a time where you’d see me at the Opera… or at a Depeche Mode concert in Montreal with my friend passed out at my feet in a puddle of beer and other stuff I don’t want to identify.

Yes, I’ve even been squashed to the point of losing my breath at the front of a throng of Guns and Roses fans in an open air concert in Germany just a day after having food poisoning and 104 degree temperature.

I’ve tried FreeStyle Skiing (like some of the stuff you see in Turin), BMX bike tricks that made my mother’s hair turn gray… and done triple digit speeds on a racing motorcycle throught he hills of Vermont, dodging racoons.

I’m lucky enough to have lived through it all without any major broken bones (though I should have had my head checked a few times).

I’ve also sat on my couch for a semester and watched more HBO and drank more Budweiser than any one college student should… and I didn’t turn the channel when the nude scenes came on, either. Where do you think I saw Animal House and all the other classics?

As Paul Newman said when he played a Pool Hustler in "The Color Of Money", "I am a student of human moves."

While I’ve never been a hustler, I take pride in having played pool till 3am in a rough part of D.C. while buying drinks for guys that would have given me the chills had been clean and sober myself.

If you want to understand marketing… and people… and what makes them buy… and where they come from… it helps if you’ve wandered around a bit in life. There is only so much you can learn from watching reality TV and staying cocooned in your home turf.

I’m not saying you have to swap needles and walk through the Strawberry Fields Forever… but at a minimum, reading a broad range of biographies, stomaching more than a 30 second dose of a genuine daytime soap opera, and flipping through the pages of National Enquirer or Mad Magazine or Cosmo or Maxim would serve to help you sample a diverse pile of human experience (both good and bad).

Hey, if you’ve rolled the dice with your life already and come up bust, that’s cool, too. But don’t overlook the fact that life can be pretty smooth sailing, too, once you pile up enough losses to figure out how to win… it helps if you have a mentor, in this journey, that’s for sure.

Life isn’t just chaos and tough times… and it’s not just bliss and beauty. It’s everything as far as I can tell.

And if you’re like me, you may find that taking a tour of your music collection or downloading some old favorites on MP3 may just spark some memories and creative juices that have been hiding out for a while.

Transport yourself back to where you have been and where others are today, especially if it’s 180 degrees from where you are now.

Then try some new sounds…

If you’re on the top of the world, take a virtual tour through the darkest valley… and if you’re in that valley, read about those on top of the mountain as well as those climbing up by trying on their hiking boots for a while. It’s all human.

Next time you’re writing about the problems your product will solve and the benefits of buying it from you, there will be a richness and an understanding, a depth, that will resonate with your potential customer in a three dimensional way inaccessible to most ‘ads.’

We all lose touch with what it’s like for others at times… and keeping an open mind and observing reality from as many perpectives as possible will definitely keep you sharp and focused on what your customer truly wants to buy from you… and you may find, especially in information marketing, that it is far more than just your product, but your empathy, too.

So slap on the headphones and turn up the tunes… sample some sounds and take a trip down memory lane… you might just find the inner voice you’re looking for on that next project.

Currently, I’m listening to hot shot newcomer country artist, Michael Lee Austin… and I’ll tell you more about him next time.

- Craig

P.S. If you’re radio only plays one station… I highly recommend adjusting your dial to the right or left to find someone you normally wouldn’t listen too… and that applies double if you are listening to talk radio. Know thy neighbor. Know thyself.

P.P.S. I’ve gotten almost 500 responses to my ‘what is love’ survey at www.worldlovesurvey.com and it’s absolutely fascinating to see the answers from around the world. Far from just a PR stunt, this project is something that I’m personally motivated to follow further. Everything can’t be about money and marketing, after all…

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Maverick Marketer Insights, Internet Marketing, email marketing, relationship marketing, copywriting, online marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.