The David Paul Thing
Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 8:09 pmWhy am I getting involved in the whole David Paul topic thing? Because it is annoying and I have a suggestion for David and Wes Southerland, his biggest advocate on this board.
First, to be open, I am a concert promoter in Toronto and my real name is Randy Finney. I promote exclusively guitar concerts.
Both Wes and David are likely older and more worldly than me but, I am going to suggest that it is their approach to marketing that is the main contributing factor in fuelling the continuing animosity between David and some of the members on the board than any past exaggerations or over zealous comments regarding David's encounter(s) with Chet are contributing to it.
Specifically, they seem to be completely oblivious to the demographic to whom they are marketing. Please understand that I do not think there is anything wrong with strong, slick, over-the-top marketing - I practice this myself as a ticket salesman. However, there is something wrong with using the "That's-enough-about-me-and-what-I-think-of-me, what-do-you-think-of-me?" marketing approach when selling tickets to my own family.
The ChetBoard is a family where no one member is any more or less important or deserving of our attention than any other member of the family. Whether he is a good player or a bad player, whether he is famous or wants to be famous, whether he is John Knowles or John McClellan, whether he knew Chet or didn't know Chet - we are all first and foremost just a member of the family.
Members of the board who do seem to command our attention more so than others (for example, Craig Dobbins), do so because they have earned our respect through their contributions to the family - not because they have more effectively marketed themselves to us.
I'll further make my point with a personal example…
I'll be introducing Brooks Robertson to Toronto in the New Year. I will market him like this…
Core Clients (My Family) - These are people who are very knowledgable about Fingerstyle Guitar and pretty much come to all the concerts I promote. I will market to these people by simply saying "You might not have run across Brooks but, I think you will really dig what he does". That's it. I will treat these people with a great deal of respect as active listeners. They will Google Brooks and probably know more about his music than I do by the time Brooks gets here.
Soft Clients: These are occasional tickets buyers who take a much more passive approach to discovering new players. I will be more aggressive at spoon feeding them. I'll use stronger language such as, "Brooks Robertson is awesome!" "Not to be missed!" "You are going flip when you hear this guy!"
Unknown Clients: I assume these people are completely dense about anybody less famous than Gaga. I will focus almost exclusively on name dropping/association - including media quotes. These people will only come because they are convinced that Brooks is already famous and they have missed the boat.
Wes, if are reading this, the videos you are posting on David's behalf are for for Soft and Unknown Clients. I think that perhaps to some members of this board, certainly to me, they are somewhat condescending and do not acknowledge that I/we are experienced, active listeners who have, or will, research David just because we have heard his name.
Perhaps some videos of David just sitting in his kitchen in front of his computer with no tag lines and nothing to sell would endure him more to the ChetBoard Family. You can't be famous in your own family - you will always just be part of the family. It usually takes a few years for the kids who come to CAAS to learn this lesson. Heck, even the greatest Concert Promoter in the world - Palmer Moore - gets this.
Randy
First, to be open, I am a concert promoter in Toronto and my real name is Randy Finney. I promote exclusively guitar concerts.
Both Wes and David are likely older and more worldly than me but, I am going to suggest that it is their approach to marketing that is the main contributing factor in fuelling the continuing animosity between David and some of the members on the board than any past exaggerations or over zealous comments regarding David's encounter(s) with Chet are contributing to it.
Specifically, they seem to be completely oblivious to the demographic to whom they are marketing. Please understand that I do not think there is anything wrong with strong, slick, over-the-top marketing - I practice this myself as a ticket salesman. However, there is something wrong with using the "That's-enough-about-me-and-what-I-think-of-me, what-do-you-think-of-me?" marketing approach when selling tickets to my own family.
The ChetBoard is a family where no one member is any more or less important or deserving of our attention than any other member of the family. Whether he is a good player or a bad player, whether he is famous or wants to be famous, whether he is John Knowles or John McClellan, whether he knew Chet or didn't know Chet - we are all first and foremost just a member of the family.
Members of the board who do seem to command our attention more so than others (for example, Craig Dobbins), do so because they have earned our respect through their contributions to the family - not because they have more effectively marketed themselves to us.
I'll further make my point with a personal example…
I'll be introducing Brooks Robertson to Toronto in the New Year. I will market him like this…
Core Clients (My Family) - These are people who are very knowledgable about Fingerstyle Guitar and pretty much come to all the concerts I promote. I will market to these people by simply saying "You might not have run across Brooks but, I think you will really dig what he does". That's it. I will treat these people with a great deal of respect as active listeners. They will Google Brooks and probably know more about his music than I do by the time Brooks gets here.
Soft Clients: These are occasional tickets buyers who take a much more passive approach to discovering new players. I will be more aggressive at spoon feeding them. I'll use stronger language such as, "Brooks Robertson is awesome!" "Not to be missed!" "You are going flip when you hear this guy!"
Unknown Clients: I assume these people are completely dense about anybody less famous than Gaga. I will focus almost exclusively on name dropping/association - including media quotes. These people will only come because they are convinced that Brooks is already famous and they have missed the boat.
Wes, if are reading this, the videos you are posting on David's behalf are for for Soft and Unknown Clients. I think that perhaps to some members of this board, certainly to me, they are somewhat condescending and do not acknowledge that I/we are experienced, active listeners who have, or will, research David just because we have heard his name.
Perhaps some videos of David just sitting in his kitchen in front of his computer with no tag lines and nothing to sell would endure him more to the ChetBoard Family. You can't be famous in your own family - you will always just be part of the family. It usually takes a few years for the kids who come to CAAS to learn this lesson. Heck, even the greatest Concert Promoter in the world - Palmer Moore - gets this.
Randy