Viewers of Rock Star: INXS, the reality show that sought to find a new lead singer for the vocally-decapitated Australian rock band, were getting a little more reality than they might have bargained for. Or a little less.
On the other hand, John Gott had carved out a great niche for himself and should be the envy of every FOH mixer over the age of 30: After mixing live sound for artists including Pat Benatar and the Talking Heads in the 1970s, he combined a technical gift with an entrepreneur's eye to create a few new live sound and lighting products, one of which eventually became SLS Loudspeakers. When INXS was at the top of the charts the old-fashioned way (by merely selling records), you'd see some of the usual logos on their touring gear, including JBL and EAW. But on their reality show, a larger-than-life "SLS" was stenciled on the speaker bins. Welcome to the new landscape of marketing pro audio.
Show producer Mark Burnett has created a slew of hit reality programs, but the big money may be in the product placement. According to Ad Age, the Survivor creator picked up $16 million alone from Toyota for placements on the less-than-successful The Contender show. That might make the $100,000 in stock options that Gott compensated Burnett with to put the SLS logo into the picture seem like small change, but from the perspective of a cottage industry like pro audio, it's a small fortune. And possibly one well spent–right around the time Rock Star: INXS was hitting its stride in September, SLS's stock was hitting a quarterly high of a little more than $2.40 a share.
Look at any back issues of pro audio trade publications going back past 1990 and you'll see plenty of advertisements with spec sheets in them–S/N ratios, gainbefore- feedback values, etc. In the early 1990s, as the home recording phenomenon was beginning to get significant traction, the spec sheets disappeared, replaced with beautiful, smiling faces and, in the case of microphones, more than a few subliminally suggestive poses. This was the industry's primitive stab at addressing what has been a massive change in how products are now marketed.
But there's a lot of catching up to do. Projecting logos on video screens might seem almost quaint when other companies are projecting them on the foreheads of college students. That's a true story, and it underscores the assertion made by the great New Yorker financial writer, James Surowiecki, writing in Wired a year ago, when he noted that brands alone may no longer work. "Businesses are now dealing with buyers who are armed with both information and harsh expectations," Surowiecki wrote. "In this environment, simply failing to match customer tastes–can no longer count on their good names to carry them through."
The entire sound and music business has become aware of this sea change to varying degrees. Guitar maker Fender makes a surprising amount (it won't say exactly how much) of its annual revenue from clothing sales, which, when you think about it, is no different than selling a T-shirt at a concert. Rival Gibson used to advertise in Vanity Fair–you won't see many reviews of API products in there–aiming at the now-affluent aging yuppie who long ago traded his Strat for an MBA. A Web site, www.musicindustrystocks.com, monitors how publicly-traded companies with a stake in the pro audio business–and there's plenty of them, from SLS to Harman to Mackie/ EAW–are using synergistic marketing to bask their burgeoning consumer products lines (and they're making plenty of them, too) in the backstage glow of their professional products. That's the strategy that SLS was following with Rock Star: INXS–their newest product line was developed with input from Quincy Jones and intends to convey a professional sound experience in a residential setting. In fact, given that the $500 Q-Line speaker systems are sold at Wal-Mart, it could soon bring the concert experience to a trailer park near you.
Harman Industries, owner of JBL, has been particularly astute at trying to leverage the value of its professional products to benefit its consumer divisions. JBL's VerTecs are easy to spot both at the Cream performances and in the ads for the band, even as Harman's consumer division sponsors Eric Clapton appearances. Paul McCartney is another Harman endorser, when he's not doing the same for Lexus. Autos, auto sound–is the connection getting clearer?
From within the industry, the importance of continuing to preach the message of professional products to the choir remains important. Microphone companies and speaker makers will still need to have the endorsements of leading mixers. But pull back and widen the picture: What once seemed an end in itself–getting the high-profile professional to like your product–now becomes one step in a longer chain that culminates in the star of the show getting into a Jaguar on Lynch on the FOX News Network .
Pro audio companies are right to try to wring as much benefit as they can from their brands, and there's considerable headroom for them to enjoy it as they run to catch up after slumbering as long as many have in the cocoon of an insular industry. (At least, if they want to–an editor of a well-known music publication recently told me that his regular advertisers threatened to pull their ads if the magazine ran "lifestyle" ads alongside gear advertisements, asserting that an Infinity auto ad could dilute the impact of a value of the speaker that goes in it.) But reliance on brand alone is a dangerous path, as anyone who seen a video clip of a rock-throwing Palestinian wearing a Nike jacket and a New York Yankees cap can understand. Does a focus on the brand put the product itself at risk? Surowiecki seems to think so, but goes on to say that that's what can also save a brand in the end. "When companies can't count on their reputations to carry them through, they're forced to innovate to stay alive," he wrote. "The erosion of brand value, then, means heightened competition–and everything we know about economics tells us that the more competition, the better off consumers will be."
