What Can Brands Learn From Lady Gaga?
Simon Cowell calls her, “The most relevant artist in the world”, but when Emily Eavis booked Lady Gaga for Glastonbury last year, she was just some up-and-coming, hotly tipped thing from the New York gay scene.
By the end of the year, Lady Gaga had sold more than 8 million albums and 35 million singles, been nominated for six Grammys and three Brit Awards – as well as becoming the first artist to have four number one singles taken off her debut album. At her New Years party in Miami, tables went for £20,000 a go. Not bad for a 23 year old who started off dancing in burlesque clubs when she was just 16 and broke.
The fun really started after her Glastonbury performance when a YouTube video was posted showing a little “something extra” peeking out from under Gaga’s miniskirt.
“Lady Gaga is a man!” gossip columns declared.
When confronted in an interview, she allegedly said, “It’s not something that I’m ashamed of, just isn’t something that I go around telling everyone. Yes. I have both male and female genitalia, but I consider myself a female”. The ‘Is she / Isn’t she debate’ raged throughout the media and Lady Gaga did nothing to slow down the speculation.
It reminded me of that oft-quoted saying from Manchester’s very own Tony Wilson,
“If it’s a choice between truth and the legend. Print the legend“.
She obviously has talent, but she decided to become a spectacle. If you don’t know what I mean, YouTube her singing Paparazzi covered in blood at the 2009 MTV Video awards. She has that admirably retro notion that a pop star should look like something that has just escaped from some manner of space zoo and is stalking the streets, looking for humans to mate with and/or eat.
But what does all this have to do with business and why should you care who she is?
The lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from Lady Gaga are not what she has done, but how she did it. It’s not by accident that Forbes Magazine ranked her ‘The Most Powerful On-Line Celebrity in the World‘ earlier this year.
Companies who previously didn’t understand how to use Twitter or Facebook properly, now employ ‘social media executives’ who look to celebrities like Lady Gaga for inspiration about growing their own brands.
5 Tips to “Grow Your Brand Like Lady Gaga”
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Relinquish control. Unlike other artists who police their image rights obessively, Gaga doesn’t allow professional photographers into her concerts but is ok with fans recording and putting videos on YouTube. That simple act of handing distribution rights over to her fans has been one of the keys to her global success. It is something brand owners everywhere should learn from.
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Make your customers feel like rock stars. One staple of Gaga’s “Monster Ball” tour is to call a fan in the audience during the show. She dials the number onstage, the fan screams out, is located and they are put up on a big screen. While the rest of audience goes bananas, she invites the fan to have a drink with her after the show.
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Leverage social media. Gaga has the requisite Facebook fan page (over 5 million fans) and Twitter ID (almost 3 million followers) but it’s how she uses them that drives loyalty. On Twitter, she tells fans what she is doing, such as tweeting them before she opened the Grammy Awards. She also tweeted to fans that she was buying them pizza for waiting overnight at an album signing.
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Give fans a name. Gaga doesn’t like the word “fan” so she calls them her “Little Monsters,” named after her album “The Fame Monster.” She even tattooed “Little Monsters” on her arm and tweeted the pic to fans professing love for them. Now fans are getting their own Little Monster tattoos. By giving the group a formal name, it gives fans a way to refer to each other. Fans feel like they are joining a special club.
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Be more creative. Lady Gaga’s image is her USP, but she’s not all fur coat and no knickers. She set up her own production company, ‘The Haus of Gaga’, where her and her cool creative friends sit around and decide what they can do that’s not been done before. Now when she has the last minute idea of performing in a 14ft long bathtub on the X-Factor, then playing a piano hidden in the basin, it can be turned around in 48 hours. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t worry about being around people who say “No” to her ideas anymore.
Whether Gaga will have staying power remains to be seen. But she is making waves in the music business and teaching plenty of people the power of fandom.
About the Author
Brand Consultant, Blogger, Ex-Giraffe Keeper, Digital Curator and Author of Sex, Brands & Rock’n'Roll. I have been a brand consultant for over 12 years working with brands such as MTV, Marmite, Nike, Reebok and LVMH. I am passionate about inspiring people to build brands that matter and make a difference. Find out more about me at http://www.jeremywaite.co.uk or read my blog at http://jeremywaite.wordpress.com
