Marketing and Music: Evanescence’s My Immortal

Why rock stars ignore the very customers that companies chase

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Why Do Rock Stars Have ‘Fans’ and Companies Have ‘Customers’?

I've always been enamored with how rock stars can so easily create fans. It's truly inspiring to see rock stars who have fans who are completely devoted to them. But it always seemed like rock stars were this special breed of people, unicorns that the standard rules of marketing simply didn't apply to. I wanted to learn more about these mysterious and unique ways that rock stars were creating fans that no company could possibly imitate. What were rock stars doing that no one else could? I had to learn more.

I first started blogging in 2005, and in many ways, those early days of blogging were like the Wild West. In those days, blogging was pretty much all of social media. A big upside to this (for the blogger) was that anyone that wanted to get press coverage, was more open to talking to bloggers. Often, I would be writing about a topic, and while detailing what the company or person had done, I would think “Screw it, I'll just email them and see if they will give me a quote!”

Surprisingly, this worked more often than you would think.

For instance, record labels and artist management people were very open to engaging with me. I got to chat with people in the music industry who managed and worked directly with artists such as Sarah McLachlan, Green Day, Jewel, The Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne, among others.

In the process of many chats with people in the music industry, and a lot of research, I began to learn more about how rock stars can create fans so effortlessly. I learned what their amazing secret was, I learned how rock stars got fans when no one else could.

They asked for them.

Rock stars have fans because they want fans.

Companies want customers, so that's what they get. Rock stars want fans, so that's what they get.

There is no big mystery here, there's no black magic. It comes down to very simply: Marketing priorities.

This is the Loyalty Graph. It gives you a visual representation of the marketing disconnect between the average company and the average rock star.

First, you have the vertical y axis, which is the Size of Market. The higher you go up on the y axis, the larger the size. So New Customers is the market with the largest size by far. Existing Customers are less than half as much, then when you go to customers with Some Brand Affinity, the market shrinks even more, and when you finally reach Brand Advocates at the far right, you can see this is just a tiny sliver of a market.

So at first glance, it makes sense that most companies focus almost 100% of their marketing efforts on New Customers, because that's the market that is the largest. By far.

But let's now look at the x axis, which measures levels of Brand Loyalty, along the horizontal. Starting at the left, levels of Brand Loyalty are 0, but they increase as you move further to the right.

New Customers have little or no Brand Loyalty.

Existing Customers have some Brand Loyalty.

Customers with Some Brand Affinity have even more Brand Loyalty.

Brand Advocates have the highest levels of Brand Loyalty.

So when we are evaluating how the average company markets versus how the average rock star does, we have to take both the horizontal and vertical axis into account.

The average company markets almost exclusively to New Customers. The advantage here is this is the largest market by far. The downside is, this group has little or no loyalty to the company that markets to them. That's why marketing is so expensive, because companies are having to pay to gain the attention of a group that has little or no interest in hearing their messages.

The average rock star does the exact opposite. They all but ignore reaching New Customers, and focus almost all of their marketing efforts on Brand Advocates. The advantage here is that the marketing cost to reach this group is all but eliminated. The downside is, this group is by far the smallest of all markets.

However…

Here’s the secret: While Brand Advocates are the smallest market, they also have the highest levels of Brand Loyalty. So Brand Advocates will go out and proactively market to other groups! They will go and talk to the customers with Some Brand Affinity, the Existing Customers and the New Customers and attempt to convince them to become fans as well.

As a result, fans have gravity. They pull customers at all stages to the right of the Loyalty Graph. Which explains why rock stars all but ignore marketing to New Customers. Their Brand Advocates will do that for them. For free.

In 2010, I attended the FIRE Sessions in South Carolina. One of the speakers was Steve Knox, the former CEO of Tremors, which was Proctor and Gamble’s word of mouth unit. He said something that connected so many dots for me:

Many marketers will read that and think Knox is completely wrong, marketing HAS to generate sales in order to be successful.

But that’s the beauty of Knox’s quote: By cultivating advocates, your brand is also cultivating sales. Fans drive sales, and ‘brand advocate’ is a fancy business term for ‘fan’.

Victory in marketing happens when you generate fans of your brand. Rock stars live by this mantra, and rock stars are some of the most successful marketers on the planet. Perhaps there’s a connection here?

Something else I learned in talking to label and artist managers: How rock stars view customer relationships completely differently than companies do.

For the average company, their attempt at building a relationship with you is tied to their desire to get you to make an initial purchase. To most companies, the first purchase IS the relationship. And once the purchase happens, the relationship has been consummated in their eyes, and the relationship is over. This is why most companies all but ignore current customers.

Rock stars do the opposite. They view the initial purchase as the beginning of the relationship. That’s the point at which they begin to market to you.

Think about your current cellular provider. You probably got a really good deal when you switched to them. One company will offer to buy your phone or pay it off if you will just switch to them. Then, the deals, and attention, stops. Soon, a competitor will start marketing to you offering you a great deal if you will switch. And so it goes.

What if your cellular provider was in constant contact with you after the purchase? Remember how Bark Box contacts a third of their subscribers every month to ask them for feedback on their service? What if cellular providers did the same?

Would you view the cellular company differently? Of course you would.

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In an early issue of Backstage Pass, I profiled how Maker’s Mark viewed marketing to its customers. CEO Bill Samuels Jr said the basic idea was “We shall not invade the airspace of a customer until they have expressed an interest in hearing from us”. This is what rock stars do every day. They ignore you, until you have raised your hand (via a purchase) and have expressed an interest, then the rock star begins the process of building a relationship.

That idea of building a relationship is something I have heard over and over again when talking to people in the music industry. They don’t think in terms of customers, they think in terms of relationships with fans. Companies don’t think in terms of having fans, they have customers.

Here’s an example. I was doing research one night years ago, and I came across a fan-run site called TheDonnasMedia. This site was run by fans of the now defunct band The Donnas. At the time (around 2007), this site was massive, it had tens of thousands of hours of live recordings in both audio and video form of performances from The Donnas from all around the world. If you were a fan of the band, this site was an absolute treasure trove of amazing content.

And often, this is the type of site that a company would have taken down via copyright concerns. I did some checking, and it turns out that not only did The Donnas know about the site, they were actively working WITH the fans running the site to get additional content on the site. The Donnas also promoted the site to their fans, pushing fans to the site and encouraging them to download as much music as they wanted, to their heart’s content. The only restriction The Donnas had was don’t post commercially-available music. Like don’t post their latest album. Anything else under the sun was fair game.

I contacted The Donnas’ manager Molly Neuman and asked her why the band would support this. Was the band using this site as a way to actually get more fans?

“Yes and it also speaks to the indie roots that we come from. We want our fans to get into the music and also support us by buying our records. We trust that our fans won't abuse the availability and that makes for a great relationship.”

I love that answer from Molly. “We trust our fans…and that makes for a great relationship.”

The average company is pursuing a transaction with a customer.

The average rock star is pursuing a relationship with a fan.

Mindset matters.

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How My Immortal Became Evanescence's Love Letter to Their Fans

Using labels can often lead to us missing core concepts and ideas that flow across multiple channels.

For instance, most people would consider Notes and the Substacks we write to primarily be text updates. The video below would be considered music.

But in reality, both are simply pieces of content, in different forms. When we understand that, then we can analyze why one piece of content, a song, engages an audience, and apply those lessons to all the content we create.

My Immortal is a hauntingly beautiful song that focuses on the anguish of dealing with a lost loved one. Particularly, what happens when we know we need to let a loved one go, but their spirit and memories still cling to us, and we are bound and trapped to continue to live with them, even after they are gone.

“I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

But though you're still with me, I've been alone all along”

When you watch this performance, notice that the audience erupts after just the first two piano notes from Amy. In fact, the audience has a very visceral reaction to the entire performance. At one point, Amy can be seen mouthing ‘Wow’, as even she is amazed at the audience's response.

If we accept that this performance is, at its core, simply content, then we can analyze what works and apply it to our own content creation.

Why is the audience having this reaction? I believe it's because the song is telling a story that the listener can see themselves being a part of. Amy is speaking to the pain that one audience member has in grieving for a loved one that has passed away. At the same time, she's speaking to another who is dealing with the pain of a relationship ending that she wanted to see continue.

The audience has taken the song and made it their own. They have put themselves in the lyrics, they have made themselves the focus. As a result, every member of that audience is having a visceral reaction because Amy is singing about them. Their pain, their loss, their grief.

At its core, this is how you create content that drives engagement. You give your audience a way to see themselves as part of the story you are telling. That is how your story creates RELEVANCE for your audience, and it gives them a reason to engage with your content.

With every piece of content you create, consider how your audience will see themselves relating to it. How will they fit into your story. If they have no role or way to see themselves as a part of the tale you want to tell, then they will ignore it.

But if they can see how your story speaks to them, and make it their own, then magic happens.

A bit of ‘Behind the Music' here. Although My Immortal is considered by fans to be Evanescence's ‘signature’ hit, lead singer Amy Lee went through a period early on in the band's history where she admits she was absolutely sick of the song. So much so that she refused to play it for over 2 years. The main reason why is because most of the lyrics were written by band co-founder Ben Moody. The song was part of the band's debut LP Fallen, which was released in April of 2003. The band immediately went on a European tour to support Fallen, but Moody abruptly left the band in the middle of the tour, citing ‘creative differences'.

Both of these events likely contributed to Amy basically wanting to wash her hands of the song. But Evanescence's fans absolutely adored the song, and continued to support it throughout the years. As the band's popularity, and fanbase grew, so did Amy's affection for Evanescence's fans. Over time, she found a way to relate to the song via her fans:

“It is the song before the last song in our set every night and it’s the moment where I say thank you for our time and being here,” she expressed. “I really sing the words to the fans. It really means something to me now that it couldn’t have meant then because they weren’t there. It feels like it was always about that now.”

For years, Amy felt no real connection to My Immortal, citing that it was ‘Ben’s baby'. But by listening to her fans, Amy found a way embrace the song, by embracing the devotion that the band's fans have for it.

This brings up another reason why rock stars so easily build loyal customers: They listen to and trust their fans. Which is what happens when your are in a loving RELATIONSHIP with someone.

Amy now views the song as the band's love letter to its fans. Given this, it's very appropriate that the song's final line, the last thing the fans hear is “You still have all of me”.

This is Why Understanding How Rock Stars Create Fans is So Important

Years ago, I set out to learn the secret to how rock stars could create fans, while companies seemingly could not.

But more than that, I wanted to learn why companies couldn’t create fans as rock stars can.

Then I learned something completely unexpected: Companies can create fans just like rock stars do. The only thing stopping them is their desire to do so.

Rock stars want fans, so they have fans.

Companies want customers, so they have customers.

What *I* want is for every customer to be just as excited about the companies they do business with as Evanescence’s fans are in the video above.

It can happen. Marketing and Music will be where we delve monthly into examples of how rock stars create and cultivate fans, then look at how companies, even you here on Substack, can apply their tactics to achieve the same end.

The Marketing and Music series will build on and expand the core concepts I teach in my book Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans. TLAR is a bestseller that has been used as a textbook in college systems across the country, including Louisiana State University, Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, Full Sail University, and many more. Plus, it's been named one of the Top 10 Marketing Strategy Books of All Time.

Next month’s edition of Marketing and Music will feature my favorite example of a rock star embracing their fans: Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

Have a great weekend!

Mack