Lady Gaga, Grand Rapids, and the Laws of Persuasion
16th June 2011
Why is Lady Gaga successful? Consider these observations.
Suffice to say, Lady Gaga has demonstrated in just a handful of years the kind of business growth that few entrepreneurs have been able to claim over a lifetime. Here are three tips that can be gleamed from her rise to stardom:
1. It doesn’t take a silver spoon to succeed at a young age.
2. You don’t have to spend money to promote yourself online
3. Supporting a popular cause can make you popular, too.
But also realize:
Herbert, who owns the label Lady Gaga records on, started working feverishly with Carter on Lady Gaga’s brand development not long after she was dropped from an earlier record deal with Def Jam Records. Carter said he felt Gaga’s energy and determination in the initial meeting, where she had a clear vision for her musical future after being dropped. “She had a forest fire in her belly,” he said. “With any artist that happens to, you never want to feel that feeling in your gut anymore. Everyday she wakes up with the eye of the tiger.”
A thoughtful brevity:
So why is Gaga so successful? The answer to this is simple: She’s fresh, brilliant, shocking, and talented.
And, finally a Top 10:
1. The Lady has a core of admirers she can always count on: the gay community.
2. The product must be packaged and designed with great care and verve.
3. You have to be technical to be a success
4. You need a vision to be successful.
5. She gets great reviews from the critics and this filters to the masses.
6. She has a simple product and a simple name.
7. She stands on the shoulders of giants.
8. She is shocking and exuberant in the things she does.
9. She has a completely integrated operation
10. She is always ready to seek the limelight.
If you’ve got either a good memory or a good imagination you see in these quotes the germ of an idea we can call Tipping Points. Gaga goes from rags to riches much like Malcolm Gladwell’s admired Hush Puppies shoes. Gladwell saw Tipping Points while Lady Gaga observers haven’t yet found a lightweight polished stone they can fling across the surface of truth, skipping lightly over the waves of understanding.
But they all sound like they know what they think Lady Gaga knows: Persuasion Laws. All you do is This and then Success follows. Of course, my first Rule of Persuasion drops to the bottom of the sea like a granite glacier,
There Are No Laws of Persuasion and If There Were Why Would I Tell You?
All the observers of Lady Gaga think she knows what only the Queen of Tomorrow knows, when actually Lady Gaga did and does what many hungry aspirants do, plus at least one other thing: The market found her. And how did that blessing arise?
Apply William Goldman’s Rule of Hollywood Success,
Nobody Knows Anything.
He uses that Rule to explain why talented and ambitious film makers work diligently and yet still produce horrible movies that do terrible box office. No one works toward failure, yet Hollywood regularly produces spectacular bombs. Same thing in the music business. Many great and successful acts manage to release failures. And, of course, this fable is found in every field of human action. Everyone aims at the bulls eye of success, but manages only to hit themselves in the butt all the while doing what observers see as the secret to Lady Gaga’s success.
The intellectual problem here is that observers are explaining Gaga’s success after its massive and obvious attainment. None of these people had found her five years ago and pointed to her imminent explosion which is what you could do if you really knew the Laws of Persuasion.
Maybe if you are a child you believe these Lawful Legends, but if you are a persuasion maven never forget, There Are No Laws. It will save you from the kind of disappointment they are going to feel in Grand Rapids, MI a few weeks from now when that multi-million YouTube hit fails to deliver anything beyond Buzz. (Click to enlarge for bigger special effects!)
