New Markets, New Employees, New Opportunities
She was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene
—Michael Jackson, “Billy Jean”
Throughout the restructuring and realigning, company leaders were constantly going over their marketing efforts. Even their branding had aged and the cracks were starting to show. They brought in a top branding consultant to help them match their branding to their new metaphor.
As part of the process, they took Jason’s team through a series of workshops in which they stepped back and looked at their metaphor and the imaging that it represented. The consultant also had them write down their perceptions of their brand while coming up with a list of adjectives to describe it. Then they got together in small groups and shared their thoughts to see if they could find consistency. They were also required to identify their main brand attributes and check for consistency with their proposed marketing plan. It was a rigorous couple of days but it was well worth it. They ended up creating a series of ball-type images on trajectories reflecting speed and agility as the core of their new brand. The new branding campaign helped them win a “Brand Genius Award.”1
The staff aggressively designed a new marketing campaign based upon their rebranding efforts. They started devoting more effort toward online marketing, network marketing, and guerilla-marketing techniques. These were things that were secondary strategies for them in the past. However, they had rested on their products and reputation until they could no longer sustain their previous momentum.
The company began actively injecting their new message into the new marketing strategies. They had to pay more attention to consumer behavior and their changing demands. They had to reach out to fans and connect to them through social media platforms. They had to start giving product away to build brand loyalty. They had to lower the price of their CDs in order to make them competitive with digital downloads. There were still many people who wanted a CD version for their library, but the company couldn’t rely on this single market demand. They had to consider cutting deals with artists that involved revenue sharing. They had to develop new licensing agreements. They were willing to try anything at this point.
They had never been niche players in the past. That was usually the domain of the small independent labels. However, if they were going to make any effort to spin off a specialized genre department, the company needed to make sure the market was large enough to support their efforts. With the choice of smooth jazz as their genre, they knew that the target consumer was typically over 40, middle to upper middle class, and with significant disposable income. This opened up a new market for them, which would increase revenues over time. However, reaching this market would require them to adopt a modified marketing strategy.
Jason tasked the VP of Marketing to get started and not be afraid to take some risks. He reminded the VP that their new metaphor should embolden them to be risk takers. He helped the marketing department develop a relationship with a top smooth jazz station in Los Angeles. They also developed a strategic partnership with a posh hotel in Newport Beach and the radio station to sponsor jazz concerts as part of their Jazz Concert Series. They were increasing their visibility in this market very quickly.
Adding New Blood
Although they had been letting many people go, they also started hiring some younger marketing geniuses to work for them full time. Their appearance and attire caused the company’s leadership to blink at the somewhat circus-like atmosphere that was being created in their workspaces. They tore down a number of walls in order to open up the spaces into bullpen areas where they could see almost everyone, managers included. For some of the old timers, this was a bit uncomfortable. They were used to hiding out in their offices, managing their portfolios, and making lunch dates with buddies in the business. Now, they were forced to actively engage their teams.
As company personnel found their rhythm, they discovered they were starting to enjoy the new energy that the younger crew was bringing to daily activities. Some of the older guys got rid of their ties and started wearing jeans to work. This was quite a departure from recent times. But as Jason thought back on it, they all wore jeans when the company started out. He didn’t remember when this all changed, but it was nice to get back to the days when they were more concerned about making and selling music than they were about managing their portfolios.
The buzz started to get around in the industry. Competitors were not sure what was happening, but they were seeing things starting to change. Jason’s team was on the streets and more visible than they had been for a long time. They were present in meetings and at showcases late at night.
For the most part, they had long since quit going to showcases where new talent would present their acts or songwriters would introduce new songs. It used to be that Jason spent at least four nights a week attending one showcase or another. It became exciting again to see the new raw talent laying everything on the line to get a record deal.
The company’s approach in the last few years had been to buy out contracts of artists that had broken into the marketplace under smaller independent labels. In this way, these smaller labels took all the risks, and Jason and his team were able to pick up promising artists on their way to the top without all the developmental costs. However, this had to change as well. They started taking risks with new artists. While this was unheard of by companies their size, it paid off over time.
Improving the Manufacturing Processes
In the area of product, they had been batch shipping for a number of years. This allowed them to maintain some control of production costs but it also required them to warehouse music products. Warehousing costs are not cheap, and because they had been selling off and renting their warehouse space, they no longer had the ability to maintain large inventories. In order to be consistent with the guiding principle of being agile, they moved to a lean engineering model and manufactured and shipped within a day of receiving orders. They found that they could also save some labor costs since they didn’t have excess labor capacity working the warehouse.
Moving to a lean manufacturing process required them to work more closely with suppliers. Since they didn’t have room to store production and shipping materials, their suppliers would have to respond to their orders more quickly than they had in the past. They also approached some of their suppliers and worked deals so that the supplier could rent the warehouse and one office space renter purchase the building at a discount. Jason’s company personnel could literally walk next door and ask for supplies to be forklifted to their packaging facility, which was only 30 yards away.
Putting Fun Back in the Workplace
From a leadership perspective, monitoring the changing culture was very critical. In the early days, the work had been fun and exciting. Company personnel would ring a big bell in the reception lobby each time an artist hit the top 100. When they hit the top 10, they had a siren that Jason controlled and he would blast it, take out the cheap champagne, and pass around the bottle. It was truly a blast. As he thought back, they hadn’t done that kind of thing for quite some time. He was not even sure when the practice stopped, but they rarely celebrated anything anymore.
Jason knew that they needed to come up with some new rituals and artifacts that would help them reengineer their culture. Rituals such as celebrating birthdays bring a group of people together, and the act of celebrating things that they all had a hand in doing created a camaraderie that would propel them into the next activity. He started to think about thresholds they could establish with varying degrees of celebratory activity. The first thing he did was to reinstitute the bell and the horn blast and gave control of it to the VP of Artists and Repertoire. Jason told him not to miss any occasion to make noise about the success of an artist.
On Fridays, everyone was to come to work in tennis attire. That didn’t go over too well at first, but he allowed everyone to dress up their outfits to match their typical clothing styles. It was interesting to see one of the female employees dressed in a Goth-styled tennis outfit with chains and full Goth makeup. The company also had a fashion show during lunch with the winner receiving two complimentary tickets to the Comedy Store. The Goth employee won the first tickets. Everyone loved that. They threw in a bottle of cheap wine for pregame priming.
Naturally, the company went back to celebrating birthdays. On the third Wednesday of the month, they ordered a large cake for everyone born in that month. Employees had to attend the cake cutting and be prepared as a group to sing the song of the highest rated single from one of their artists that week. Believe it or not, everyone working in the music business is not musically inclined, and it was horribly apparent on several occasions. Jason made a mental note not to go out with them for a Karaoke night.
Teams were formed made up of employees from the various departments. They would often adopt team colors, chants, and tribal poles. A couple of times senior management had to step in to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. The team with the highest charting artist in their category each week was able to proudly display a tribal pole made by the Art Department that was made from a tennis racket and tennis ball. They called it the Wimbledon Slam Award, and it was beautiful. Speed, quality, and innovation, which were consistent with their metaphor, became the metrics used to identify winning teams. Teams competed in a variety of ways, with winners receiving weekend passes to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, or LEGOLAND.
Questions to Consider
1.As you consider your new metaphor, does it require rebranding efforts?
2.Do you see making changes with members of your current staff?
3.What can you do to improve your internal processes?
4.Can you identify new markets where your products or services might find opportunities?
5.What are some rituals and artifacts that would enhance the working environment for your employees?