Eric D
Devilishly Good Ads..
In 2018, I was working for Crealytics, in NYC, whose headquarters is in Berlin. Founder Andreas Reiffen likes electronic music and regularly hires Berlin locals for company parties. This was a series called NY Know Go featuring in-person event’s and webinars. Scott Galloway was the keynote speaker and I left Google Ads for the day to Dj the conference & VIP dinner.
I remember posting the image below saying it was the “rare intersection of my professional and hobby life.”
I suppose this was a very sign of things to come.
This was Fall 2018, in May 2019, I found an in-house role closer to home at not just a food company but a leading meat purveyor with an ecomemrce division.
No one saw covid 19 coming, which cause the web business to explode. My SEM role expanded into paid social and affiliate and my morning free time opened up due to office closures and then a hybrid schedule. I used most of that time making music.
The new sounds I was making got 2 thumbs up from my a friend who is a vinyl-addict and DJ Dad so I knew I was on to something. He told me I should aim to release on vinyl so I went about pitching myself.
I got some nice feedback no yeses. Realistically who would take a chance pressing vinyl from someone with no prior releases on wax with very small following.
So it was time to do it myself, I figured that since SEM isn’t the most creative channel, hello feeds & text ads, I could launch my own record label & get to play be creative director.
To be clear, the music is more for dark clubs and warehouses, not for big glitzy EDM shows in Las Vegas or big stages where the lights & lasers compete for attention with the music.
With little to no following my first run of 300 records sells out, found homes in the record bags of the DJ elite and peaked at position 2 on the overall sales charts at Decks.de.
Over a decade ago I opened my own Google AdWords account a few years into a weekly Friday night gig. The process of researching, planning, launching and then optimizing campaigns really reminded me of DJ work in terms of prepare, press play, then adjust or improvise.
The Saturation & Rise of Social Media in the DJ world is just a few years ahead of Performance Marketing...
Since I’m doing a little more on the music front the buying records and playing them at home I’ve paid attention to the larger DJ world and in the 2020s DJing saw a surge in popularity. Social media, people at home during covid, combined with the affordability of DJ software & music almost anyone can do it.
Can they really? No, but DJ software has built in training wheels like auto sync and song recommendations which is enough for the average person to be “OK.”
Playlists of “hits” are easily found along with oodles of tutorials & best practices and since the music has been commoditized social media presence rather than music has become the differentiator.
It’s eerily similar to media management. I see “LinkedIn-Fluencers” sharing Million Dollar Secrets Available to Anyone for a Comment or Share and oddly some of these same people don’t even have a professional recommendation.
Anyone can DJ and be passable just like anyone can start a Google Campaign and be “OK” but “OK” is not ideal and Google steers advertisers to the latest best practices which encourage more spend & their ability to charge for clicks that may not lead to sales.
Just like DJing is more than easily found playlists, beginner controllers and pics for cheap thrills on social media. Real media management requires deep experience that isn’t found by dropping comments on LinkedIn for a $ecret$ Cheat Sheet, YouTube university, or recommendations from Google.
Good DJs adapt to each gig & what’s happening in the room, there’s no one size fits all. I’ve seen “audit”s by firms so married to their ways of doing things that I’d be worried they would throw the baby out with the bath water.