Adventures in PR
Laura Ries lays out the PR/Branding errors that the Dixie Chicks have made by being politically controversial. This mistake is a doozy:
The Dixie Chicks are a country act. Crossing-over means more album sales, but can leave you stuck in the mushy middle. Core fans think you have sold out and new fans can quickly move on to the next thing. The Dixie Chicks today are wearing lots of black eyeliner and saying things like “Country listeners are a bunch of rednecks; we don’t need ‘em.” Not a good move. Always remember where you came from and never insult the fans who made you successful.
Yes, publicly insulting your core audience is not a great way to move the ball forward - the audience is, after all, the source of revenue :)
Comments
On the other hand
[sean] June 14, 2006 23:48:59.270
On the other hand, upgrading your core audience may be a good move. Of course, they also have to change their music to do that...
Had Enough
[Patrick Logan] June 15, 2006 2:13:43.890
Maybe they've made enough money and now feel they can speak their mind.
Frankly the real question is why on earth (or on US soil at least) the rest of us millions of Americans are putting up with what's going on in the capitol.
[] June 15, 2006 2:51:47.198
They're currently #1 on Billboard.
the "core audience" burned their records
[James Governor] June 15, 2006 7:20:58.652
bit of a disconnnect there. did they say that - re rednecks - or things "like that".
Re: Adventures in PR
[ James Robertson] June 15, 2006 7:30:22.820
Comment by James Robertson
I addressed the difference between their #1 status on billboard, versus their real difficulties with their tour here. To summarize - I have something like 20,000 people reading this blog on a weekly basis. When we hold Smalltalk Solutions in a particular venue, we attract a few hundred people. When the whole world is your potential audience (the net), it's easy to generate impressive sounding numbers.
And yet, that may not translate into big numbers in any one spot. What the Chicks did was create a PR problem between themselves and a segment of their fan base. I suppose it all depends on how important their tours are to them. Given the typical contract that the labels use, they may be getting surprisingly little back from the #1 Billboard status - which may bring this PR problem home to them. Or not. Who knows?
As to Patrick's comment, I'm not addressing the politics of this - I'm looking only at how their decision to take a publicly controversial political stand works in PR terms.