Jul 06
9
Establishing Alignment – Getting Records to #1
There is a fallacy about selling. They tell you that you need a USP. You don’t. You need a UBP.
What is a UBP? That is a Unique Buying Proposition.
Think about it. You think you sell things to people. You may do so once or twice. But if you build a Unique Buying Proposition, you build a relationship with people. Instead of you selling them on something, they ask you if they can buy things from you. It is a whole different mindset.
To build a UBP you have to become aligned with your customer’s needs. Then you provide into them.
Sometimes it is hard to figure out what that means. And sometimes your customer is your own company…
It really gets down to having a conversation with your most important strategic customers and listening to what they have to say to you.
When I started working in the record business (as opposed to playing in a band which is not working at all) I worked for a company that was an old school Australian music publisher. They also owned radio stations. I joined as they were trying to figure out how to get seriously into the record business and I really got lucky. After six months of figuring out which way was up in the company, I was told that I was going to run the record label. And together with producers George Young and Harry Vanda we built it into a really successful label. Most people would be familiar with AC/DC. That was one of my bands. But we had a lot more, and we had a seemingly endless supply of #1 records. I had a dream run. A dream job where everyday we invented how to market records and do stuff that was tremendously exciting and energising.
But it almost didn’t work out that way. It almost worked out that nothing happened.
Here is the story:
You would think that if you worked for a company in the record business that also owned radio stations you would have to have it made. It would be easy. Just make records, take them round to your pet radio station, get them played. Bingo. You get hits.
Nice in theory.
But the radio station that my employer owned in Sydney was 2UW. It was reasonably successful among an adult demographic, but it was totally irrelevant to the teenagers that bought the kind of records that I was planning to put out. They stayed away in droves.
Teens listened to another station: 2SM. In fact 2SM had a 25% market share at one point back then in the mid 70’s – an almost unthinkable audience share in the leading radio market in Australia.
After having put out a couple of records that were resounding failures (the only stations to play them was 2UW and a couple of others that were not particularly influential) I realized that I was never going to get a hit record unless I could figure out how to get airplay on 2SM. They were my critical customer. And I needed to understand how to get alignment with their needs.
John Burnley was the station manager at 2SM back then.
I took John to lunch and asked him whether there was some problem getting our records played on 2SM.
John said: “No – absolutely no problem. As soon as the records become hits we will play them”.
My response was that there was no way that this would ever happen because they needed to get airplay to become hits.…
John said: “That shouldn’t be a problem – after all your boss owns radio stations. You can get 2UW to play them…”
Catch 22!
I needed to think about how to get past this problem.
I thanked John for his input and went away to consider.…
The next day I decided to take Ray Bean out to lunch. Ray was the station manager of 2UW.
We went to the steak restaurant at the top of the Travelodge in Pitt St, Sydney, Ray’s favourite steakhouse back then.
I told Ray that I needed a favour from him.
Ray said: “No problem. Have you got a record you need playing? As long as its not rock.…. and doesn’t have any loud guitars on it.…. we might be able to play it at night time.…. on the weekend.…..”
I told Ray I actually needed a quite different favour. I needed him to give me a solemn promise that he would never again play one of our records unless it had first been added to the 2SM playlist.
Ray said: ”Does Ted know about this?” (Ted was my boss. The son of the owner of the family empire).
I told Ray that he didn’t know. But that I would tell him in due course.
Ray said: “Fine, but let me tell you something. You are going to lose your job and I don’t want to lose mine. So if anyone asks anything this is on your head”.
Great! I had what I wanted.
After lunch and thanking Ray profusely for his co-operation (!) I headed down the street a couple of blocks to John Burnley’s office.
Fortunately he was in.
I told him about my conversation with Ray Bean. My close was this: “So now it’s an even playing field. There are no special privileges. Can I rely on you and your Program Manager to make a decision based purely on the quality of the record that I bring in to you?”
John agreed to. Before I left he said, “You know you are probably going to lose your job over this, but nice try. Go for it!” I had heard that line before.
Fortunately for me, the next record we were planning to release was due two weeks later and it was great. It was called Evie and it was by Steve Wright. It was unusual in that it was actually three songs. The writers and producers - George Young and Harry Vanda - put an enormous amount of time into producing the tracks and cross fading the three songs and giving them a kind of rock operatic kind of context.
Ted, my boss had asked me which part of the song, Part 1,2, or 3 should be the single. Part 1 rocked out. Part 2 was a ballad, and Part 3 rocked.… I knew that Part 2 would be safe for 2UW to play and that Ted was thinking about that.
I took a decision to release the 3 parts spread across two sides of a 7” vinyl single. Side one had Part 1 on it and side 2 started with Part 2 and continued into Part 3. Together it was an 11 minute extravaganza of pop.
Everyone thought I was mad. Ted couldn't figure out how I thought I was going to get a hit when the ballad was not the A side of the single.
I took the record in to 2SM and left it with John Burnley – but I took it in to them on tape so that they could hear the whole 3 part extravaganza in the optimum form.
Then I walked back to my office on a sunny Sydney morning.
As I walked through the door to my office, my secretary, Fifa, called to me. She said that Trevor Smith was on the phone. Trevor was the Program Director at 2SM at the time. He reported to John Burnley, but he was in many respects more powerful. He was the ears of the radio station.
What was this going to be about? It couldn't be about Evie. I had only just dropped in the tape.
I picked up the phone with trepidation.
Trevor spoke: “Turn on your radio.”
I did. I tuned it to 2SM. Evie was on the radio!
I was dumbstruck. Trevor spoke again: “Your record is on the playlist. All 3 parts. In high rotation.”
I went from nothing nowhere to having an 11 and a half minute record being played every hour of the day on the hottest radio station in the country. I could not believe my luck. And you couldn't have wipe the smile off my face for the next week.
The record went to #1. It went platinum. It was the biggest single of the year. 2SM ran a free concert to celebrate Steve Wright. And that was the beginning of a series of a dozen #1 records I had over the next couple of years. And by the way 2UW played part 2 of the record.
But none of that would have happened if I hadn’t cleared the way with John Burnley first. Creating alignment. Removing corporate roadblocks necessary for achieving mutual success.
Oh, and by the way. I didn’t get fired.