Undressing Lady Gaga's Social Strategy

Or Why Lady Gaga has more friends than you and me.

She has created a cult. OK call it a tribe or fans if that makes you feel better.

Look at the KISS ARMY, Harley Davidson, Jimmy Buffett's Parrot Heads. Rabid fans. The Dead Heads follow their favorite band from town to town. Dear Lord don't talk smack about the Aggies to a Texas A & M fan. All of these fans share many similarities in common.

Lets consider the elements of her cult marketing:

Secret Signs-Her fans and Gaga send their secret hand signs towards each other during her shows.
A Name-Her fans are called Little Monsters
Provocative-She stands out (Remember AIDA : Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) She definitely gets your attention like it or not. From her sultry Britney Spears like attire to her meat dress and Stigmata enactment. And each new appearance comes with a new outfit.
Purposeful-In her interviews (which you can see in the hidden House Blogger area you can get free access below this article) she proves that she is scripted and rehearsed. Knowing exactly what she is doing. Almost like there is a strategy to her persona. Her song titles match her persona. The song "Born this way" as a title an example implies difference and separation key in causing polarization.
Mystery-You never know what you are going to get when she shows up. We are all drawn to the dark. And in the House Blogger Back Room, I go into more detail how this serves her marketing.
Authority-She is the cult leader and demands the attention of not just her followers but her detractors too. Much of that is because she is on purpose.
Polarizing-If you are not a fan you still more than likely have an opinion of Miss Gaga. And more than likely it is distaste or idolation. You either love or hate her as they say. And that is simply good marketing. If you hate her, she can careless about her other than to mark out what her fans are not. This effect is somewhat paradoxical. As the naysayers often times give power to the smaller set of the population or cult. Often times giving power to the less powerful culture.

All of the above is what helps to mark out and serve the community of Gagaville. When I think of this polarization thing which is really just marking out a tribe. I think of when the punk rockers were the rebels of my day when I was coming up.

They were anti establishment. So they paradoxically protested establishment by creating their own.

Gaga in Action and Your Social Media Strategy:

From Forbes: Gaga's Poker Face and you might imagine it's Britney Spears in a track suit. But watch the video and you'll see a work of conceptual porn. Gaga, a 23-year-old blonde with bulletproof bangs and 3-inch lashes, slinks across stages in gleaming metal bustiers, smoked latex underwear and thigh-high stiletto boots. Performing Paparazzi at the Video Music Awards, she ended the set dangling above the stage in gauzy white La Perla lingerie, horrifying her audience as fake blood gushed from her bosom.

All this debauchery is purposeful fodder for social media and the mainstream press. "She's a perv, but Lady Gaga understands viral marketing better than anyone on the pop scene today," says magazine industry veteran Simon Dumenco. By showing up wearing a bird's nest or a model of the solar system on her head, every Gaga appearance becomes an item (11,500 mainstream media stories cite her this year). "She is directing every frame of her music and her life, imagining how clips will appear on YouTube and what people will tweet after she appears on the VMAs," says Dumenco.

In order to understand social media you need to understand community building and be able to ferret out the hype from the profit.

Lady Gaga has 29 million Facebook Fans and 8.4 million Twitter Followers.

Those numbers speak volumes. She will earn $100 million in 2011.

What to Do if You are Only a One Woman Army

If you are a one person business or a small business. You certainly do not have the power of a record label to promote you.

What you do have is you and your own dynamic personality. It is time to let your star shine.

What does this have to do with Facebook or Twitter? As we said above, Gaga is purposeful. There is a strategy. The very best way to consider strategy online is as a publisher.

You publishing funnel has a reason behind it. A blog post, or Facebook post or comment has a reason to exist. This is very off popular opinion. Want to get more sophisticated? It also has a schedule and is categorical. It is not a singular event. If it cannot mesh and behave synergystically with the multitude of other activities that you do, then you are more than likely running a promotion at best not a business.

This is why I really did not comment much on the social media until I could prove to myself that it could be scaled into my other marketing activities. I spent a good year jumping into the fire to see how far is too far and using my own persona as a testing bin for social influence.

A Revisit to your USP

Yes the marketplace seeks to commoditize you.
Hell, our brain does so we do not have to think right?

As the business entity we are proud of our offerings. And we can get insulted that someone might even compare us to something that we might consider less than.

However, we all want to label things.

You might say I am :

A Christian -
A Realtor
A Father
A Hip Hop Singer
A Republican or Democrat

HE is: X
That is: Y

What does any of that mean?

We as humans have to label things and people.Can't help ourself.

We label ourselves and others so as to make an easier decision, because we simply cannot process all the data... and by nature we are wired to delete rather than to go introspective. And what might be introspective people are often the most inflexible. Because they have done the most work to justify their beliefs or deletions.

I know a guy I took a workshop from years ago. In fact, I am seeing him on Friday.

He does NLP/hypnosis type training. He once told me that hard core Christians or people that have heavy hard core beliefs are beliefs that are very easy to destroy. Because they have such a huge wall to defend that particular belief that they leave much of their defenses down in the rest of their system of thinking. (not that he would do that-he is a very sweet man. He was merely explaining the need for us all to consider our systems for clear thinking).

Either Or Thinking

So that is the shock value of a Gaga. It forces us to make a deletion. A decision. The like or hate button is pushed in our version of Facebook in our brain. But the Gaga meme still replicates and we just have to talk about it.

On the poitical front think Ronald Reagan. Just mention his name and the Left Wing will react vicerally. It is too predictable. Sheep like. Seriously. And on the right as Hank Hill said in the the cartoon, "I miss voting for that man".

**So you want the market to have an opinion of you.**

Consider the recent AOl sale of HufPO. Why would buy do that?

Consider much of the so called news today. Its more news with a view or color. MSNBC, FoxNews.

Gary Halbert a great marketer once said "ambivalence or no one caring what you have to say, is your business death." Put another way if no body is talking about you, do you exist?

So what if you create your own cult like Gaga has? I have it for you, it is the Back Room.

Sign up now for the Back Room (some are telling me to call it the Spiders Lair;-) I just loaded more killer content in there that gets into why the dark attraction for Gaga and how it does not have to be for us.