How to use music as a marketing tool. No, not just as an accompanying tune to your advertising message.
In entertainment there is an important role for the rainbow community in theater, TV, film and music. From actors to directors, from writers to producers and from dancers to singers – but certainly also for the fans. And I want to talk about them for a moment.
It doesn’t seem to be directly related to marketing, but if you look at the money that goes around in that industry, the publicity that surrounds it and the hysteria that sometimes results, music appears to play an important role in the ‘customer journey’:
Representation -> visibility -> normalization -> tolerance -> acceptance -> respect.
Not only the artists who belong to this community are a ‘poster person’ (Elton John, Lil Nas X, Lezzo, Sam Bettens, but also Duncan Laurence) and thus role models, but there are also superstars who have grown and remained big thanks to the LGBT community: think Madge, Cher and Gaga. I will give a few examples where music played an important role.
Charles Aznavour – Comme Ils Disent (France, 1972)
Aznavour was a brilliant and respected artist who sang in 9 languages. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 94, having recorded more than 1,200 songs over a period of 70 years. He surprised France in 1972 (!) with this touching, realistic chanson about a window dresser who performs as a transvestite in a nightclub in the evenings. He sang about his relationship with his mother, his friends and his sad love life. (NB: a transvestite is not always gay, but in this case it is)
What Netflix is now doing implicitly with the vast majority of their productions, Aznavour already did in 1972 with this song: giving a stage to alternatives to the standard household or lifestyle. Showing that there are other ways to live your life.
“I was the first in France to write a song about homosexuality,” he later said. “I wanted to write about the specific issues my gay friends faced. And I could see that things were different for them, that they were marginalized.” His portrayal of the ‘window dresser’ is subtle and at the same time sublime – and gave visibility.
The song has since become a classic, sung in English as “What Makes a Man a Man” by artists such as Liza Minelli and Marc Almond. The impact of this chanson still reverberates, as witnessed by the visits to my channel. His video is number 5 on my YouTube channel, with 190,000 views.
Roberta Flack – Ballad of the Sad Young Men (1969)
I started with Aznavour because of the effect his song had, but let’s take a step back in time. Even before this French chanson there was a kind of ‘battle song’: “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”. For decades, gay bars provided one of the few safe places for their patrons. But “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” looks beneath that reassuring surface to provide a view of that scene that is both poignant and painful.
The song was not written with an exclusively gay audience in mind, although the straight woman who wrote the lyrics, the beat poet Fran Landesman, certainly knew about that world, but her words have resonated deeply with many gay people. Featuring music by Tommy Wolf, the song was popularized by Anita O’Day in 1962, and found its most famous interpretation in the 1981 version by openly gay jazz singer Mark Murphy. And then there was Roberta.
“Roberta Flack offers the meatiest reading on her 1969 debut album, First Take. Proceeding through the arcs of its melody with granular attention, Flack finds weight in every word. And brilliant and brutal words they are: In Flack’s elegant reading, we linger over seven minutes with all the sad young men who pass their time “drinking up the night” and “missing all the stars,” as a “grimy moon” watches them grow old. Flack’s version culminates in a crescendo of Streisandian power, idealizing a gay bar ode that pierces the heart.” (Jim Farber for Pitchfork)
Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive (1977) & I Am What I Am (1984)
There is not a drag queen in the world who has not included these songs in their repertoire. “I Will Survive probably would’ve become a gay anthem even without the specter of AIDS. A few years later, when a generation of queer people was ravaged by a disease dismissed as “the gay plague,” “I Will Survive” made for the perfect rallying cry. It burns with righteous indignation and celebrates resilience, qualities well-suited to a community that scrapped for recognition and banded together even as it was condemned and ignored as a matter of policy.” (Jamieson Cox, Pitchfork)
Gloria’s classic I Am What I Am (later also performed by Dame Shirley, who reached a completely different audience with it) is also seen as a battle song: “I’m not going to change, I’m good.”
Lady Gaga – Born This Way (2011)
The all-rounder Stefani Germanotta, who made her debut in the Netherlands in 2010 by playing the piano with platform shoes with gay show host Paul de Leeuw, has been an Ally of the rainbow community from the start and she made no secret of it. Her story in Born This Way is a clear statement that you should be who you are, not how others think you should be. She also touches on the topics of bullying, racism and people with disabilities.
Part of the lyrics:
It doesn’t matter if you love him or capital H-I-M
Don’t hide yourself in regret, just love yourself, and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way
Don’t be a drag, just be a queen
Whether you’re broke or evergreen
You’re Black, white, beige, chola descent
You’re Lebanese, you’re Orient’
Whether life’s disabilities left you outcast, bullied, or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
‘Cause, baby, you were born this way
No matter gay, straight, or bi’, lesbian, transgender life
I’m on the right track, baby, I was born to survive
The video has “only” 300 million views on YouTube (Bad Romance was one of the first ever videos to break the billion mark and is now at 1.6, her Oscar-winning Shallow has 1.4 billion plus another 650 million in the live performance of the Oscars, and Pokerface is also a billionaire). These numbers indicate the popularity – and therefore influence – Gaga has, especially on Millennials and GenZ. Her lyrics and statements thus contribute strongly to the journey from representation to respect.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert – Same Love (USA, 2012)
This American hip-hop duo formed in 2008. They were the first duo in chart history to have their first two singles both reach the top spot. Macklemore expressed his support for LGBT rights and same-sex marriage in the song “Same Love“, featuring vocals from singer Mary Lambert. The song also condemned homophobia in mainstream hip-hop, society and the mass media. By the way, the guys are Allies.
“Same Love” was released in 2012 and peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was included during the campaign for Washington Referendum 74, which, upon approval in November 2012, legalized “gay marriage” in Washington state. The song reached number 1 in both Australia and New Zealand. The cover art for the single features a photo of Macklemore’s uncle, John Haggerty, and his husband, Sean.
Macklemore explained that the song also stemmed from his own frustration with hip hop’s stances on homosexuality. “Misogyny and homophobia are the two ‘acceptable’ forms of oppression in hip-hop culture. It’s 2012. There’s accountability. I think we’re evolving as a society and I think hip-hop has always been a reflection of what’s going on in the world.”
The song was nominated at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards for Song of the Year. On that occasion, they performed the song where (the openly lesbian) Queen Latifah read the wedding vows to 33 couples lined the aisles. “This is a love song, not for some of us, but for all of us,” she said. The ceremony was followed by a performance by Madonna singing “Open Your Heart” – just to throw in another gay icon.
All of this took place before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in the US in 2015. The video also received the 2013 MTV Video Music Award for Best Video with a Message.
In 2017, Macklemore performed “Same Love” at the opening of Australia’s National Rugby League grand final – during a national referendum on “gay marriage” – the outcome was YES. The official video now has more than 260 million views.
And finally
Then we had the Kinks who came to a surprising conclusion with Lola in 1970. We saw the androgynous Grace Jones (“Feeling like a woman, looking like a man”, in Walking in the Rain, 1981) and much earlier David Bowie (Starman, 1972) and Lou Reed (about the New York queer scene, Walk on the Wild Side, 1972) that broke gender roles and showed that not everything is male/female. There was the mysterious Amanda Lear: was it a woman or…? (her name was almost an anagram of A Real Man, so!).
Boy George went over the top with his outfits, statements and shamelessly being himself. Madonna showed us every corner of the music studio, the stadium (and more), reinventing herself every time, but always with a decidedly positive opinion about LGBT. She has been influencing the Boomers and GenX in particular for 40 years. The Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, Communards, kd lang, Todrick Hall – but nowadays also the outfits, social posts, statements and performances of allies like Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift show the role and influence of music and musicians.
Many (LGBT+) celebs appear in this exuberant video, including Adam Lambert, Adam Rippon, Billy Porter, Ellen Degeneres, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jonathan Van Ness, Katy Perry, Laverne Cox, RuPaul, Ryan Reynolds and Todrick Hall.
Polish LGBTQ activists and allies made their own version of this song in response to the “LGBT-free zones” created by the Polish government.
Some of these artists are also actively involved in LGBT issues, such as Miley Cyrus with her Pride Collection for Converse. Others are hired as a brand figurehead: Lil Nas X: together with Elton John for Uber Eats, but also for Doritos and Google, and – believe it or not – the corny brand UGG.
And thus, music is really a marketing tool again.
Conclusion
Music does not always have a message and is not always a marketing tool, but very often it does or is – consciously or unconsciously. Music and even more the associated videos have a huge impact on society. Many artists speak out clearly for tolerance and respect or show it in their videos and on their socials. So even the modern version of the ’45’ (said this boomer) can support Marketing the Rainbow.
Representation -> visibility -> normalization -> tolerance -> acceptance -> respect.
Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is researching the theme Marketing the Rainbow. He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about It’s Fresh, Ben& Jerry’s, Get Woke, Go Broke, Pronouns, About those rainbows, Alphabet soup, M&M’s and the lesbian invasion, Magnum and the lesbian wedding, Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship, Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.