Influencers and Bob Dylan
The current marketing obsession with using content to influence customers needs to find an intersection with expertise. The story in this week's 1to1 Weekly shows how direct marketing can start to define an influencer profile for a company's brand or service, which I love. Any customer strategy worth its salt has to be operationalized to be measurable and effective. But a recent observation regarding the way Bob Dylan's new song collection (album or CD just doesn't cut it anymore) has intrigued me. It has shown me that levels of expertise, when they become consistent, can be a powerful influencer tool. Let's start at the most basic level, which is me, a person who considers Dylan a songwriting deity. I can tell my circle of friends that this album has six great songs out of the 12. Do you trust that? Well, then you can go another level. The folks at Apple think its pretty good because Dylan is the focus of its TV spots. Then you can read a Rolling Stone review that sings its praises. Then you can go to The New Yorker whose normally vicious critic can't say enough good things about it. Individual recommendation when it meets expertise can be very powerful. Dylan's "Modern Times" is the number one album on iTunes, and he can't even sing anymore. Really, he can't. Trust me.
