Market Like Miley Cyrus – 7 Ways To Get It Twerking!
Even the most traditional, conservative client or company has a lot to learn from Miley Cyrus. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do – business lives and dies by differentiation. Here’s how to market yourself, your products and your company. Do it like Miley.
The world is watching Miley. Prancing around at the MTV Video Music Awards where everyone can see her in what looks like fancy golden underwear. I’m not sure I know what “twerking” is, but from the sound of it, Miley, you shouldn’t be doing it in public! Hey, the Oxford Dictionaries Online just added the word so I guess it’s okay. Twerking rhymes with working and whatever Miley is doing … it’s working!
Tweet Tidal Wave
Here are the hard numbers that prove it. At the peak of last year’s Video Music Awards, Twitter registered 98,000 tweets per minute. In the recent 2013 show, Miley’s shocking performance alone triggered a tidal wave of 306,100 tweets per minute. It topped the 231,000 TPM from the Super Bowl Blackout and was just below the 2012 Election Night. Not bad for a former child star and Disney Darling.
RIP Hannah
In 2006 Miley made her mark as the newest face in the Disney array of fresh talent on the Disney Channel. “Hannah Montana” was about a talented young woman who led a double life. Teenager by day and pop star by night. Miley got the role because she was different – with talent, timing and a more than a little edge. When the show left the air in 2011, she became really “different.” Exit tame Hannah Montana. Enter untamed Miley Cyrus.
You Can’t Look Away
The driving force behind any kind of marketing success is differentiation. Like her or loathe her, Miley Cyrus is so different in so many ways we can’t look away. Miley gets a new hairstyle and it’s on the front page of Huffington Post. She sticks out her tongue and tongues start flapping everywhere from TMZ to Fox news. The important thing for businesspeople to realize is that this is a deliberate strategy. It’s Hannah Montana all over again, wrapped with controversy and backed by carefully planned and flawlessly executed marketing.
She knows that all the pre-teens who watched her on Disney are now 25-34. She can’t reach them singing in a cowboy hat – she has to do it dancing in her underwear.
The Biggest Lesson You Must Learn
When I started in TV years ago in Nashville, Tennessee, the station manager, Harold Crump told me, “Be different or die. If they don’t know your face or your name, they don’t know you.” It was scary but true. Here’s what that means to you.
• Delivering the ordinary or the traditional isn’t different.
• Providing the same features, benefits and value you did before isn’t different.
• Offering the same message or content as last year isn’t different.
• Just meeting client or customer expectations, no matter how well you do it, isn’t different.
• If the people at the other end don’t perceive your company as different – it isn’t!
• If the people at the other end don’t perceive you as different – you aren’t!
Look at what you did before, how you did it and if anyone else can do it as well. Then forget your reservations and overcome your fears. You have to go beyond the expected. You have to be willing to dance in your underwear.
“Any difference your competition can duplicate isn’t a difference at all.”
One of Johnston’s Laws
7 Ways To Get It Twerking!
Even if you don’t care for Miley’s style, music and notoriety, you can learn from her strategy, planning and laser-sharp execution. Here’s how to market yourself, your products and your company.
1. Never waste a great opportunity to put your company, product or yourself in the spotlight. Don’t let anything get in the way of building popularity when the moment is right.
2. Know your core audience and play to them. Target the people who are most interested or have the most to gain. Focus on earning 100% of their available attention or business.
3. Be amazing from the word “Go.” Do what you do and do it exceptionally. Shoot high, promise more and deliver consistently. Forget under-promise and over-deliver. You do that and I’ll beat you every time.
4. Know who you are and what you are in business to do. Don’t try to do everything. Have a plan and a vision of who you are. Be the best, stay on course and never compromise.
5. Be easy to understand and easy to buy. If people don’t understand the value you offer, they can’t buy it. If you constantly have to explain or justify, you’ll lose them. Do business on the buyer’s terms. Be the logical best choice.
6. Be different in all the right ways. Miley Cyrus, Fiona Apple and Lady GaGa are three performers who constantly change their images. Follow their example and don’t be afraid to re-invent your company, brands and yourself when the situation demands it. There’s nothing safe about the traditional, typical or the expected if your clients eventually get bored and go elsewhere. Take two giant steps toward the extreme, the fascinating and the enthralling. Don’t forget to always give them a show.
7. It takes work to be noticed. People won’t search for the deep meaning of your logo. They won’t be destroyed if the colors are slightly or someone didn’t use the official font. People are attracted and riveted by surprise. That doesn’t happen by coincidence. It takes strategy, planning and execution.
A Footnote Instead Of A Headline
What would have happen if Miley Cyrus had just recycled Hannah Montana and kept doing the same thing? What if she had played it safe and kept delivering the same performances her audience had already come to expect from her? She most likely wouldn’t have failed completely, but she would be a footnote instead of a headline.
Do you want to be a footnote or a headline?
Market Like Miley
Clearly and deliberately position yourself, your products and your company as being very different. In a world of look-alike competitors, become a choice of one. Reduce the selection of comparable, acceptable choices to – you.
Rethink, reposition, market louder and be obviously different than the competition. That’s how you attract attention, get considered, valued and establish relationships with the right people. You can’t get a new results – new business and revenue –doing things the old way every time. So be bold, confident and do whatever it takes to be different.
