Dmitry Linkov

Self-Marketing in music

February 6th, 2006. Published under General. No Comments.

Last Saturday I visited a performance of famous electronic DJ and musician John B. I heard about him a lot, but his popularity was a bit strange for me. To be frank I didn’t knew his last work as a musician, and my perception of him was a bit out-of-date. So, what I saw?

I saw a good self-marketing. John B implemented a lot of principles written in many books. I don’t know if it was well thought-out. Anyway:

1. Present yourself and a piece of BRAND Sense – right in the beginning, when John was on the scene, the first song he played was his own intro “Jooohn…. B…..” and so on something about 1 or 2 minutes. Not long, not short – effective. I hope he will use it in all mixes and web site and everywhere – then it’s going to be a good BRAND Sense example.
2. Entertainment – he smiles, he cries “hello Moscow” and some obscene words in Russian, he directs his energy to the people!
3. Involve in discussion – I hardly can remember a lot of DJ’s who bring a camera with them and record themselves and people on the dance floor. He does.
4. Make show – black nails, costume, sunglasses, punk style haircut, dancing in a robot style – he is amazing!
5. Purple Cow – definitely. He IS a living purple cow. Not only how he dresses, how he acts himself. If he will play bad music, people won’t like him. But he writes his own music in his own style – he calls it something like “new electro”. It’s very remarkable!

In fact I really enjoyed his DJ set, his music and his perfomance. He is a good example to all other DJ’s.