Targeted Boy Band Secrets For Startups

Starting with the Rolling Stones, record companies and promoters have worked to create bands that the chosen demographic will love. While the MTV series Making the Band showcased creating a Boy Band to the public, the Korean pop industry became a reproduction machine for successful groups of men and women.

Like a startup, these musical groups are made up of three to four young adults with proven talent and passion beyond their peer group. They make a series of changes to their look, voice, and song selection to best appeal to the market. So far, this has proven to be a better model than the record label scout of days past.

Work ethic

Perhaps most surprising to those on the outside is the level of work required by the group's participants to learn dance routines, sing, record albums, make appearances, and tour. This effort is very similar to that of a startup, where speaking engagements, product development, brand building, and other work are required weekly.

Talent

A band requires the ability to sing better than most. The benefit of multiple singers is that each can overcome the others' weaknesses in talent. The same is true for startup founders. On a team, each person should have different strengths that overcome the shortcomings of their co-founders. For example, one person may be an extroverted communicator, while the other may be an introverted math genius.

Naming

Like a startup, a band's name is significant. You want it to reveal the group's personality while differentiating it from the competition. The early rock music scene included many names starting with "the," as in The Doors, The Moody Blues, and The Who. Later, bands took on single-word names such as Journey, Survivor, Warrant, and Poison. Again, these trends are followed to classify the music and differentiate.

Brand

Apple Computer, Harley Davidson, and The Grateful Dead were the most influential brands of the 20th century. Their differentiators are that these brands create a cult-like following among their customers, to the point where fans tattoo the Harley Davidson and Apple logo on their bodies and, in the case of The Grateful Dead, drive around the country just to hear the same concert a hundred times.

Culture

While I never enjoyed the Boy Bands of the 1990s, millions of people did. They represented a cultural phenomenon where, like Elvis and The Beatles before, teenage girls were brought together by a common experience. Ninety-year-old women still talk about Elvis with a blush, while forty-something women break out 98 Degrees and NSYNC posters.

Lust

Not often talked about, Boy Bands were designed to excite primal urges in their listeners. Most of the songs are about sex, love, and teenage lust. While complex to reproduce for a software company, startups should seek to excite the primal desires of their customers. Instead of sex, this could be greed, power, or popularity.

Conclusion

For a company to grow beyond its peers, it must become a phenomenon. To reach such a status, the company must be attractive to its customers, stand for something they believe in, and make them feel desired when using it. This means not being safe. Think Elvis or Johnny Cash.