The Tanning of America (41 page)

As hip-hop expands its reach and germinates in different cultures and economies around the world, we're seeing others follow similar routes—with young entrepreneurs coming out of music and entertainment to be influential business leaders. The millennial path to success has been redefined and repurposed—as have the signifiers of style and status.

After Jay-Z wrote “Change Clothes” and the retro jersey days were left behind, there was actually a swing in the other direction toward more tailored shirts, tight-fitting apparel, and skinny jeans that briefly became a cross-cultural millennial uniform. That soon went the way of the baggies and has now settled into looser but better-fitting silhouettes. Reflecting the economy, millennials seem to be searching for classic, dependable brands that have quality and some scarcity—or for the latest find that isn't overpriced but has been anointed with a level of cultural cool. In some circles that sustains demand for Louis Vuitton and most high-end brands or helps down-to-earth brands like Converse, while within other circles it's harder to find names like Diamond Supply Company and the Supra sneaker line, which are a couple of the hot sellers at this writing.

One of the coolest things I see about this tan generation and the scene they're cultivating now is that there is no uniformity and that's a style unto itself. The unapologetic attitude of today draws from that permission to lead and to be different. That's in the DNA.

As for the language being spoken in this culture by young America today, I think that Mike Bentley had it right when he talked about the evolution of urban culture into digital culture. Read any texts or posts online by the under-thirty set and you will pick up an intonation that can only be described as tan—it's a cultural mash-up of code. Madison Avenue loves to drop in on this language or pick up the latest street slang and turn it into advertising. Again, that runs the risk of losing its shelf life of cool faster than you can shoot the commercial.

What I try to say diplomatically, whenever the occasion allows, is that, first, you can't visit the topic and expect to become conversant with how to speak to young America, or it becomes a situation of going to Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower and then coming home. You didn't experience Paris. The executives try to have the Cliffs Notes to culture, as if having a Facebook page, owning an iPad, and listening to Lady Gaga is enough, when they are really skipping the process. Besides the problem that too many executives are stuck in their boardrooms, not going out and immersing themselves in culture, the act of simply
listening
to the consumer is so much more important than trying to pick up the lingo.

By the way, the language of cool right now is so amorphous, trying to jump in on that group megalogue in the middle of it can really be, as they say,
awkward
. There are numerous hip-hop slang books and even pretty funny flash cards that break down old-school and new-school expressions. But they too are only as relevant as the date on which they were printed. It is, therefore, a misconception that at any given time there exists certain slang that is universal to urban youth culture as a mind-set. Language is and has always been a very regional thing. Variances show up between cities and even neighborhoods.

This diversity has only enhanced the musical storytelling. Not only that, but as Fab puts it, “The resources for creativity for young artists today are unlimited, especially with everyone having equal or similar access to technology.” For instance, the availability of beat-making software and downloadable beats has given rise to waves of new young rappers—who can become producers with little money invested in equipment. In 2009, SoundScan reported a record-high sale of vinyl records, leaving no doubt that the format is in the midst of the biggest revival since Berry Gordy invited Detroit teenagers in to listen to the latest vinyl pressing of a Temptations hit, “My Girl,” and asked them the question “If you were hungry and broke and only had enough money for this record or a hot dog, what would you buy?”

At one point, not long after Jimmy Iovine had to make the argument to iTunes that most kids didn't even know to associate guitars with music, I heard that the international chain Guitar Center was actually selling more electronic turntables than guitars. DJs have all kinds of new tools and technology for mixing—including a very cool HP console that Translation helped develop and market in its early stages. There are also programs like Serato that will let anyone with a turntable that hooks up to their computer mix any song on their hard drive as if it was literally on vinyl—basically allowing you to scratch a computerized “blank” of the record and mix it for repeated usages.

Fab Five Freddy went so far as to say, “There's no excuse not to be creative with the resources available.” The climate now, he feels, has close parallels to the early days when the scene and the music achieved liftoff on extremely limited resources.

With all this resilience and resourcefulness in the music scene today there is one dramatic difference that had bothered Jimmy Iovine for years. Whenever he and I used to talk—catching up on this and that, as well as projects we had in the works together—he would happen to mention how frustrated he was becoming with the dismal quality of the sound that kids today were getting from listening to music on their laptops and with cheap earbuds. Remember those beloved speakers of his that he always used to discern whether a record had transformative powers? After all these years, the importance of the sound experience was still an obsession.

And there is a deep-seated reason why he is right. The globe-shaking and mind-changing power of music, the force that draws together people from all kinds of different backgrounds and weaves them into communities, lies purely in the emotion that is carried by sound. When Carlos Santana said that music has the capacity to rearrange the molecules in the psyches of listeners, he was referring to the emotional relationship between music and audience that comes from the sound. The magic happens in the feeling.

Experts disagree about how the shift from analog to digital has impacted recorded music's sound. Some feel that the computerized and digitized sound, not unlike high-def video, has helped to refine and perfect all the parts of the whole—creating as close to a live and in-person experience as possible. Others say the opposite is true. They argue that technological improvements have blurred the raw and gritty emotional components that were captured more truly on vinyl and in vintage recording studios. Such is the thinking that has to do, in part, with vinyl's resurgence. Where everyone agrees, however, is that with most music being heard through laptop or low-quality computer speakers or through inexpensive earbuds, the sound is hugely diminished.

That is the backdrop to a revelation that happened one day, back during the time when 50 Cent was blasting off with his G-Unit sneakers and Jimmy was shooting the sh*t with Dr. Dre—who was half-joking about how he wished there was a sneaker he could promote. All of sudden, Iovine got an idea. “Forget sneakers,” he told Dre, “we're going to do speakers.”

With that, the two of them started working with engineers to develop state-of-the-art headphones as a product line that was perfect for Dr. Dre—perhaps the most iconic music producer of our time. During this development process Jimmy learned of a study that showed them what they were up against. The question posed by a team of researchers to different age groups was whether they could tell the difference between music played on the most state-of-the-art speakers that cost $100,000 versus a similar-looking set of speakers that cost $1,000. With the 40-to-50-year-olds, 85 percent could identify the better speakers. With the group of 30-to-40-year-olds, about 80 percent could also tell the difference and identify the higher quality. When they got to the younger group of 15-to-30-year-olds, only 25 percent could tell the difference and identify correctly which were the $100,000 speakers and which were the $1,000 ones.

These findings alerted Jimmy and Dre and their partners at Monster Cable that they were veering into uncharted waters. Would their target consumer—millennials—have a need for headphones retailing for over three hundred dollars and would they even care about the improved technology? Well, what they were betting on was the idea that it's not about the technology but about what it allows you to experience. And that was the story that needed to be told, with a fashion and style component that made them cool. Very simply, authentically, Monster Beats by Dr. Dre arrived after two years in development with a statement from Dre that explained his passion, why this product filled a need—because “people aren't hearing all the music.” Who has greater credibility on that point than Dre? No one to my knowledge. Dre's statement went on, “With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear, and listen to the music the way they should, the way I do.”

Oh, yeah. The truth sells. You might not be able to be a legendary music producer, but you could share the experience with professional-quality earphones for consumers that delivered sound as it was meant to be heard. Plus, they looked as cool as they fit. And when they hit the market, the sound experience more than exceeded expectations. By leveraging Interscope's stable of iconic artists, along with innovative partnerships with HP and Best Buy—not to mention superb marketing that included the likes of LeBron James in what became a must-see commercial with him sitting in his locker room with his Beats by Dr. Dre on and singing along (off-key) to Cyndi Lauper's “Time After Time”—a sea change in awareness about the importance of sound followed next. The reception was so robust that a short time later Beats by Dr. Dre put out headphones with a Lady Gaga signature and high-quality earbuds for Sean “Diddy” Combs. When
AdAge
named Beats by Dr. Dre one of the hottest brands of 2010, Jimmy Iovine reported 1.3 million pairs sold for the year. He also announced that he and Dre's next collaboration with Hewlett-Packard was HP Beats Audio inside PCs and that five million units were readying for release.

Miraculous as it must seem to develop a high-priced product in the midst of the worst recession in modern times and have it turn out to serve a cultural need such that multiple industries are supported and enriched by it, I can attest that it's not brain surgery. It's problem-solving.

Such is the focus, I believe, that gives us a navigational compass reading for where millennials and brands, together, can move forward in this remix of economy, culture, and values. The solutions, just as in the past, will come from anyone and everyone with innovation and passion, anyone willing to take risks and to seek comfort in discomfort.

When Translation first opened its doors, we began to describe a phenomenon that we felt was going to be key to our work and that we also saw was being acutely overlooked by Madison Avenue, corporate America, and many of our competitors in the arena of branded entertainment marketing. It had to do, in part, with a language gap that was less between the iconic brand and the consumer—or the celebrity icon and the audience—and more between the brand and itself or between the artist and his/her medium. It also had to do with a tanner public that wanted to have both dialogue and megalogue, as we've noted, but particularly didn't want brands speaking to their communities one way and to other communities another way. But most of all, the faltering of blue-chip brands and entertainers once deemed immortal has to do with the trap of their own success.

In my observation of this phenomenon, I've come to conclude that there's a point of saturation in which one's success and celebrity cross the line into backlash, apathy, and boredom by the consumer. What happens next is that consumers become rejecters of the core value proposition. In other words, all that work that was done to market into customers' core values goes out the window. It turns into the “can't win for trying” syndrome. This happens when there is a lack of credibility, be it a celebrity, a clothing line, a shoe company, or automaker. Suddenly, the mismatch of the “success attained” versus the “success maintained” becomes transparent to all.

What are the causes for that perilous crossing of the line and loss of credibility? At Translation we've identified three main culprits:

Earlier we touched on a few aspects of the Thinnest Slice as it relates to artists in culture. What is it then? Simply put, it's where a person, object, or concept is so authentic that it becomes popular because of this authentic truth. It becomes so popular that it occupies the closest distance possible to being “mass culture” but it doesn't cross that line; rather it manages to maintain living in that space. This space is defined as the Thinnest Slice. At Translation we wanted to pay closer attention to this balancing act and its relevance in a changing, tanning global marketplace as a way of addressing different brand challenges. So, we concluded, the point where you can walk that daring line—standing on the bleeding edge between enduring success on one side and, on the other side, consumer apathy and rejection—is the precise location of the Thinnest Slice. The strategies required in the balancing are not easily managed and demand equal parts prescience and science, restraint and courting the masses.