Unless you are a rock music historian, you probably do not
remember Gram Parsons. He was a country-rock singer and musician who played on
many of the groundbreaking groups of the 1960s. He had the distinction of flaming
out and quitting groups just before they made it big. He had stints with such
groups as The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers - whose members later
formed the Eagles. He had close ties with the Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris,
and a host of rock musicians who were on the cusp of making it in the industry.
But Parsons was always leaving the scene when the big time called. A lifestyle
of drug and alcohol abuse took their toll on Parsons. He died of an overdose in
1973 at the age of 26.
The biggest
thing that happened to Gram Parsons was after he died. Apparently he and his
friend, Phil Kaufman, had made a pact with each other at a funeral for another
friend. They agreed that whoever died first, the surviving friend would take
the body of the deceased into the desert and cremate it while toasting the
dearly departed person. When Parsons died, his body was to be flown back to New
Orleans where he had grown up. Kaufman borrowed a beat up hearse. He found out
where Parson's casket would be located at LAX Airport. Dressed in cowboy attire
and severely inebriated, Kaufman somehow convinced airport workers that the
plans for Parson's funeral had changed and he would be taking the body by
hearse to the funeral home instead of flying it back to Louisiana. They released
the body to Kaufman. He drove it into the Joshua Tree National Forest and found
a spot near Cap Rock. That is where they dragged the casket out of the car,
opened the cover, dowsed the body with 5 gallons of gasoline and tossed a match
to it. A giant fireball lit up the night sky. Kaufman and his friend became
frightened that the police were following them and the fireball would tip off
their location. They fled, leaving behind the charred remains of Parsons and
his casket. Even in death, Parsons flamed out prematurely. His remains were
sent to New Orleans for burial. Kaufman was later arrested and charged with
stealing the casket. Since Parsons was dead, he could not be charged with
kidnapping. He held a benefit party to pay off his $700 fine.
What does any of this have to
do with your marketing efforts? First of all, putting a marketing campaign
together takes a lot of work. Coming up with a creative idea that you think
will resonate with your customers is real work. Getting a customer to bite on
what you are selling is sometimes an elongated process that calls for patience.
Too often companies declare a marketing campaign dead before it has a chance to
have any impact. This leads to jumping from one thing to the other with little
to no effect on your sales. If you are in charge of marketing for your
business, here are some things to consider to keep you from flaming out. First,
most customers go through a proving process when deciding to buy a product or a
service. The process goes something like this: prove that I need this (in other
words, prove your worth), prove that it really works, prove that it is worth
the price you put on it. When you are putting your marketing campaign together,
you need to anticipate these proofs and build the answers into your marketing
message. Secondly, remember that there are right and wrong times to try to
market your wares. When is the best time? When a customer desperately needs it.
The proving process is always shorter when a customer is in a hurry.
Understanding purchasing cycles is critical to marketing effectively. (See my
article, Purchasing cycles: the art of good timing in marketing.) I had a hamburger for lunch today. I saw an ad for a new Burger King
hamburger at 11:00 a.m. They reached me when I was thinking about what to eat
and it was all I could think about until I stopped by one of their restaurants.
What impact do you think the same ad would have had on me at 1:30 p.m. when I
was neither hungry nor thinking about my next meal? It is important that you
approach a customer when the need is there. Otherwise you will be lost in that
perpetual, I-am-not-ready-to-make-a-decision mode. Thirdly, don't get the
progressions of marketing mixed up. Progressive marketing goes like this:
awareness marketing, first time sales marketing, retention marketing. If you
expect an awareness marketing campaign to bring you first time sales, you are
getting the cart ahead of the horse. Build different segments of your marketing
campaigns to achieve different goals. Be smart about your marketing, and be
patient.
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The Strange Death of Gram Parsons:1973, The Byrd Watcher, http://www.ebni.com/byrds/memgrp6.html
Photo by LianeM