Trend

This is the age of data. Data is a commodity. What is funny is that that the people that can afford the important data are the same ones that are responsible for it in the first place. It creates a cycle of advertising inbreeding where mutant trends are sometimes developed.

Here is an example, a few years ago a friend, who is on the fringe of the music business, and I were looking at the current issue of Billboard. Billboard has a section where they give hard sales numbers of the top selling c.d.s each week. They only tell the actual sales for the top several records and the rest of the info is just where a record appears in the charts. So, you can find out what sold 400,000 copies. See, I can figure that out anyway, it is always exactly what consumers are being inundated with on radio, video, iPod commercials, magazines, USA Today etc.

My friend who is, like me, on the bottom of the industry food chain said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could know what sold 1,000 copies last week and 500 the week before?” Now, this is dangerously close to a corporate mindset for an independent record producer with a lifelong anti-authority, punk philosophy. Too much coffee maybe, but he is trying to spot a cultural movement before it happens. He surmises that if one had this valuable data one could capitalize on it.

There is a company called SoundScan which is owned by the Nielsen people. Every time you buy a c.d. and the barcode is scanned, the data is compiled by SoundScan. If a records sells five copies in Humansville, Missouri SoundScan knows about it. SoundScan sells access to this data via subscription. At the time, the subscription rate was $15,000 a quarter. My friend and I decided it would be better to just try and make a record we liked every once in a while and hope to find the cultural movement by happy mistake.

The point is that the company that can afford fifteen grand to be ahead of the trend is allready forming the trend. They make the trend, pay big bucks to be aware of the trend and then base their next decision on what the trend is. It is an incestuous bloodline of demographic data. Any new, mass-market product be it food, music, movie, car is concieved with this type of data in hand. Then every product is tested for audience reaction at all stages of development. The result is usually a slicker and refined version of the previous marketing success. Every once in a while the system pops out a mutant.

Current case in point is the new G.M. ads featuring the John Cougar song “This Is Our Country”. Cougar crooning lyrics that sound like Woody Guthrie on prozac over a soothing, folky, rootsy, heartland track, all the while flickering images of Rosa Parks, war protesters, Katrina devastation. How in the hell did they come to the conclusion that this is the way to sell trucks?

All I know is what I heard I can only assume the rest. I heard that Bob Seger put an end to the “Like A Rock” ads after seeing the Al Gore movie and deciding that he did not want to use his work to contribute to environmental devastation. I have heard that the Seger ads were highly successful and for a long time.

Somehow, the replacement ended up being this surreal, multi-media John Cougar atrocity. I don’t know if it’s supposed to make me feel patriotic or rebellious. I know it is supposed to make me feel like buying a truck. Instead it makes me feel like burning my rock and roll records.

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Tags: John Cougar, SoundScan