The week before his band Guns ‘N Roses is to be inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Axl Rose has released a letter written to the hall rejecting his nomination into the shrine and telling them that he won’t be attending. He has even asked that the hall specifically not include him in name or image when they induct the band.

Some people are saying that Axl Rose is an immature idiot. Others are giving him credit for standing by his personal ethics.  No matter what your opinion is, you can learn from Axl Rose.

GENERATING BRAND BUZZ

Everyone is talking about Axl Rose today. That hasn’t happened in a long, long time. He has gotten his name in the press in a major way. But… consider the massive buzz a one time Guns ‘N Roses reunion would have created had Axl showed up, accepted the honor, and joined his estranged former bandmates for a jam session. The Police did it in 2003, playing together for the first time in two decades. It was magical.

REINFORCING YOUR BRAND IMAGE

Snubbing an organization like the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame is, well, pretty damn rock ‘n’ roll of him. By doing this, Axl builds up his anti-establishment image. Not that it needed building up, considering his past behavior.  But… there’s bad-boy behavior and then there is just being an a**hole. Plenty of people would suggest this borders on the latter. Notoroious bad boys like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, AC/DC, The Ramones, and many others are in and they all accepted their awards with class and grace.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

Is Axl Rose a genius for standing pat on his beliefs? Or is Axl Rose a petulant punk for blowing off the rock hall?

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“Steve Jones knows a thing or two. Listen and take notes.”

That’s what Gene Simmons of KISS said about Brand Like a Rock Star. Alice Cooper called it “the insight of a rock ‘n’ roll veteran.”

Quite often people ask me if those quotes are real. Of course they are. Gene and Alice were kind enough to read what I wrote and give it four thumbs up, and I’m extremely grateful. Besides, it would be unethical and illegal for me to fabricate quotes like that.

It was important for me to seek out endorsements that created anticipation for the book, not hype.

Anticipation is the pleasurable expectation of something to come in the future.

Hype is the exaggeration of something’s importance in order to get publicity.

Had Gene Simmons said “Steve’s book is better than anything Ries and Trout ever wrote”, I would have been flattered, but I couldn’t have used an endorsement like that. Ries and Trout set the standard for marketing books, and it would be insane for me to raise expectations to that level. That’s just hype.

Smart advertising avoids hype. Smart advertising creates anticipation. It has a magical way of making you feel like that product might actually be better than the ads portray it to be. Smart advertising uses honesty and frames the message in reality.

Axl Rose blew it with the Guns ‘N Roses album Chinese Democracy. It was quite a decent album, for the record. But nearly 20 years of hype about the album created expectations that could never be lived up to.

Hype is created by using unsubstantiated claims of greatness. It is normally full of cliches like “best ever” and “one time only” and “never before seen”. Hype works when you don’t care if you ever see the customer again. It works if you are competing entirely on price and price alone. But in terms of building a long-term viable brand, it most often fails.

“Death by hype” is the title of Chapter Ten of Brand Like a Rock Star. In it, we look at the Segway, the Star Wars trilogy, and five tricks you can learn from watching Steve Jobs build anticpation for Apple products. You can order the book here for just $14.95. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

This is it… the fifth of a five-part Brand Like a Rock Star look at why your marketing doesn’t work.  Part one, part two, part three, and part four are all archived to read and share with other entrepreneurs or marketers.

Far too much marketing today is filled with cliches, boasts, and unsubstantiated claims. Hype is dead, but marketers cling to it every day.

Axl Rose learned the hard way. Guns ’N Roses started working on Chinese Democracy nearly 20 years ago. As production went on year after year, Axl defended the delays by bragging about just how incredible this album was going to be. As the budget went up and up, and it turned into the most expensive album ever made, Axl continued to boast about the legendary record he was making.

When Chinese Democracy finally came out in 2008, it was destined to fail. Expectations had been raised so high that the world saw through it, and decided en masse long in advance that the album sucked.

In reality, it got decent reviews. It wasn’t an awful album at all. But it will be remembered as a failure because at was backed with hype and BS.

Do you advertise that you have ”the highest quality at the lowest prices”?

Your customer thinks you are lying. And you are, because it is impossible to have both the very best quality and the very lowest prices. Everyone knows it. Fact of life. We are actually willing to pay more for good quality, but you are too caught up in your phony claims to realize it, so you stick to spewing out unsubstantiated hype… because that’s the advertising method you know.

If you are going to make wild claims in your ads, back the claims up with evidence. Lowest prices? Prove it. Highest quality? Show me.

Better yet, stop worrying about hype and focus on the customer experience. How does my life change when I use your product? What do I feel?  Apple aggressively marketed the iPad without hype. This video has been seen nearly 300,000 times in the week since it was first released, and it contains no hype at all… just valid claims.

These powerful ads for the iPhone4′s Facetime program don’t hype a thing. They sell an experience and an emotional connection between the customer and the product. Simple.

It takes guts to recognize that much of what you are saying in your advertising is being ignored, but the sooner you realize it the sooner you can move on and start to make your marketing really work.

When marketing works, it is magical. People really do react to smart marketing. The results rock. You’ll love it.

Finally, to drive home the anti-hype message here is an open letter to noisy advertisers from potential customers. This was an earlier post on Brand Like A Rock Star that received plenty of interest:

Dear advertiser:


I saw/heard/read your ad on the TV/radio/paper, and would like to remind you of a few things.


1. Stop bragging. You don’t have the best staff. Sure, you might have great people, and if you do please tell me why it matters to me and how it will benefit my customer experience. But don’t just tell me “our people make the difference”. I are pretty sure there are some bozos that work at your place, just like the ones that work with me.


2. If you have “lots of free parking”, it only matters if you are located in an area with no parking. Otherwise, it is just noise and hype and nobody cares. If your product is that amazing, I won’t get all worked up about dropping a few quarters in a meter.  I once paid $40 to park at Fenway because the Red Sox are THAT amazing.  Really, if “free parking” is going to make the difference, you aren’t that amazing.


3. Telling me that you “need to move 100 cars by the end of the month” means nothing. I don’t care about the pressure you might be under to sell cars. I don’t even believe you are actually under any real pressure, because every car dealer says the same BS every month. Noise. Ignored. Besides, I don’t walk into your dealership and scream “I need to make nine mortgage payments and put braces on my kid by December” and expect you to give a sh*t.


4. Yelling in your ads is stupid. I either turn the channel, change radio stations, or hit “forward” on the PVR. The only people who yell at me in real life are angry. Yelling doesn’t convey urgency, it conveys idiocy. Or intoxication.


5. The more you hype something up, the less likely I am to believe you. People who have to brag about how cool they are, usually aren’t. I’ve known that since high school, so why haven’t you figured it out yet?

The strangest part is that when you do take the time to connect with me on an emotional level, I stop avoiding your advertising and start to seek it out. Your marketing message stops being marketing and becomes valuable information. Isn’t that cool?


Love,
Your customer

PS – part of the inspiration for this series came from Roy H. Williams piece “12 Causes of Advertising Failure”, which is included in his book “The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words Into Magic and Dreamers Into Millionaires”. Smart marketers are into Roy’s stuff.

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If you’re passionate about great bands and great brands, please click here to subscribe to Brand Like A Rock Star by email. You can also download the free e-book “Three Chords in Thirty Years: How AC/DC Built The Model For Brand Consistency” here: http://www.mediafire.com/?xydnoitdanm.

Is your brand Slash or Axl?

Since leaving Guns N’ Roses in the early 1990s, guitarist Slash has gone on to work with some of music’s best as a session musician.  You’ve heard him play with artists as diverse as Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Rihanna.  He formed the successful band Velvet Revolver.  He even reached the top of the Smooth Jazz charts with a beautiful Spanish guitar song called ”Obsession-Confession“.  These days he is prominently featured on the massively successful ”Guitar Hero 3“ video game, and he is on a world tour supporting his new solo album. Slash is a highly regarded brand in the music industry.

On the other hand, Axl Rose has spent the past 20 years attempting to destroy his personal brand and the brand equity of Guns N’ Roses.  He is notorious for late or cancelled concerts and tours.  The nearly-20 year wait and millions of dollars spent on the quickly-forgotten “Chinese Democracy” album is the music industry’s Ishtar. His continuous legal battles, addictions, and rants have earned him a toxic reputation.

Now Axl Rose has taken his public battle with Slash to a new level, launching a lawsuit against the makers of Guitar Hero 3 because they included his mortal enemy on the cover.  You see, Axl claims that part of his licensing agreement for the song ”Welcome To The Jungle” included a provision that no music or visuals of Slash be included in the video game.  Apparently in Axl’s mind, not only must be succeed but his enemy must simultaneously fail.

How much damage has been done?  According to Rose’s law suit, he deserves $20 million.

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I heard the song “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses on the radio yesterday for the first time in a while.

Hearing this song again a few months after its radio and chart life-cycle ended put it in a fresh perspective, and it sounded pretty damn good. In fact, overall reviews for the “Chinese Democracy” album were relatively solid. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B- rating, and Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars out of 5. Those who took the time to get to know “Chinese Democracy” seemed to enjoy it.

So why is “Chinese Democracy” destined to be remembered as a failure?

Because it didn’t live up to the hype. Realistically, it never had a chance.

It simply couldn’t have been good enough to live up to the advance billing of being the most expensive recording project ever. It could never live up to the expectations of fans who waited 18 years between new original G N’ R material (their last new original album was the “Use Your Illusion” double album in 1991). Over the course of those 18 years there were many leaks, sneak previews, and boastful comments. The album was called “f*cking epic” and “mind blowing” by Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach.

Beyond the hype, the album was victim of a band that has become faceless. The image most fans have of Guns N’ Roses is the late 1980′s band that sang “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “November Rain”. But the Guns N’ Roses of today is essentially Axl Rose and a revolving cast of musicians. They may be extremely talented, but it doesn’t really matter. If it isn’t Axl Rose and guitarist Slash, then it isn’t really Guns N’ Roses… at least as far as most fans would likely consider.

Most smart marketers could have predicted the fate of “Chinese Democracy” without ever hearing a note of music.

“Under promise and over deliver”.

Sounds simple enough. You want to entice people and tease them with your soon-to-be-released product. But you don’t want to hype the product to the point where the eventual release is a let down.

The Star Wars movies had the same problem. Two decades of waiting and endless advance hype made it almost impossible to truely appreciate the movies in their own right.

The Blackberry Storm… another product hyped to the point where it was destined to meet with lukewarm reviews. Some claim the Apple iPhone was also overhyped, but sales figures and the level of cultural acceptance would suggest that the iPhone did live up to the advance billing.

The Segway? It was supposed to change the way cities were built and the way human beings interact. Instead it gave Paul Blart, mall cop, something to ride.

Windows Vista? It didn’t change computing like Microsoft promised it would.

And while I don’t have a ShamWow yet, I’m pretty sure it would have a rough time living up to the high expectations that pervasive infomercial has helped generate!

The lesson is simple.

There is a fine line between hyping your product, and hyping your product to the point of dooming it. The right amount of hype helps make for a successful product. Too much hype, and you are destined to let your customers down.

There are other reasons “Chinese Democracy” didn’t sell that well… it was released in a down economy, it wasn’t well promoted by Axl Rose or Universal Music, and it was sold exclusively through Best Buy retailers. But those issues pale in comparison with the real reason for failure: it was impossible to satisfy the expectations of fans who waited almost 20 years for an album that cost $13 million to make. It was game over, before it even began.

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