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Stefanie Germanotta changed what it means to be a pop star.
She dropped out of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts after one year to pursue her music career full time. She received pushback immediately: her style was described as “pop music with the flu,” and her image did not fit the expectations of the genre (i.e. she wasn’t the Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera/Jessica Simpson type). Consequently, radio stations wouldn’t play her music.
Ever resilient, Germanotta turned to alternative channels like YouTube and MySpace. People took notice, and, nearly a year later, radio stations picked up one of her songs: Just Dance. The song became a hit and so did Stefanie — who the world knows as Lady Gaga.
She went rogue, and she’s celebrated for it.
This story isn’t unfamiliar. Consider Quentin Tarantino, Banksy, Danny Meyer, Yvon Chouinard, Lizzo, Pete Souza, Greta Thunberg, Ursula K. LeGuin, Amir Rao & Greg Kasavin, Ricky Carmichael, Dave Chapelle, and Bong Joon-ho.
These people are “Greats,” not because they’ve perfectly executed the prescribed “path to Greatness,” but because they re-imagined it entirely.
And sure, in the music industry, rebellion is often embraced. But this is also something I've heard over and over again from marketers, authors, founders, and professors I’ve met during my time as a Community Manager at Clique.
Good marketing may be highly data-driven and precise, but great marketing goes a little rogue.
So, what does “going rogue” look like in marketing? You’ll face some obstacles: risk assessment, analysis paralysis, and the ever-persistent “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality.
Our advice: start with your vision. Instead of doing what’s safe, predictable, and sure to be anticlimactic, imagine what Greatness could be and have the guts to try it. If it doesn’t work, learn from Gaga and be resilient: imagine again, try again.
~ Jessa, and the Team at Clique
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