How Mozart Can Change Your Business

Guest Post by Bill Seaver Before you read this post I rec­om­mend you watch this video clip (embed­ded below).  Watched it? Great. Now let’s talk… I remem­ber being total­ly enam­ored by the sto­ry of Mozart the first time I saw the movie Amadeus. One of the things Mozart did was change the way Aus­tri­ans viewed operas. He did this by rec­og­niz­ing there was a way to build on their rich his­to­ry of music and improve upon the parts that could be bet­ter. In the clip from Amadeus we see that point clear­ly. The com­pos­er Salieri is the guy at the begin­ning. He is a mod­el com­pos­er by all the stan­dards of the present day. He didn’t ques­tion the way things were, rather he sought to make a name for him­self with­in the sys­tem. He also hat­ed Mozart. He hat­ed him because Mozart didn’t give a rip about the sys­tem and he had more tal­ent than cas­tle full of com­posers. We see Mozart’s tal­ent and lack of deco­rum in the video. He mem­o­rizes the song after hav­ing heard it once and then does the unthink­able: he changes it. Did you catch the line, ​“It does­n’t real­ly work, does it?” Mozart has the audac­i­ty to take what is a stan­dard short con­cer­to and improve upon it because it can be bet­ter. Mozart And Your Business Today there are Mozart-esque changes hap­pen­ing in mar­ket­ing. The old ways of reach­ing peo­ple aren’t the only (nor often the best) meth­ods for reach­ing the right peo­ple for your busi­ness. Addi­tion­al­ly, there’s more noise demand­ing people’s atten­tion than ever before. The new kid on the mar­ket­ing block is social media. In many ways social media is the Mozart of mar­ket­ing world now. Social media builds upon some of the great mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and pub­lic rela­tions his­to­ry from the last cen­tu­ry and reshapes it to fit today’s cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy. What Social Media Is  Social media is a vast array of new Inter­net-based tech­nolo­gies that allows peo­ple to cre­ate and con­sume media. Social media is also a new mind­set for both busi­ness­es and their cus­tomers. It’s a mind­set that means the con­sumer has a voice and is will­ing to use it. It’s a mind­set that means a busi­ness can actu­al­ly be sure who they’re reach­ing with their mar­ket­ing efforts rather than tak­ing a shot­gun approach all the time. For all the hype about Face­book and YouTube and Twit­ter there are very real busi­ness impli­ca­tions today. The sound of busi­ness has changed. There are new instru­ments to learn and new ways to play the old instru­ments. There is new music to play and there are new ways to play the old music. It’s time to face the music. Your busi­ness needs to be think­ing about these changes. Your busi­ness needs to be work­ing toward these changes. Your busi­ness needs to decide how they apply to your par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. Your busi­ness should be look­ing for its own Mozarts. It’s time to change your tune. Let the Mozart mind­set push you toward change that will ben­e­fit your com­pa­ny for years to come. How is your busi­ness using Social Media? Are you com­mit­ted to this new change in marketing?