First Impressions

I'm going to be completely honest, I was originally going to be taking this post in a completely different direction until I got a stroke of what I like to call genius.

I have finally found the time to sort through over 750 songs that are a part of the SXSW 2008 Showcasing Musical Artist collection. How I understand it is basically every band that plays at the SXSW festival releases a song for fans to check out before getting the chance to see them live in concert at the festival. I have downloaded the torrent of all the songs 3 of the last 4 years, and its a great chance to discover new/emerging artists, and develop tastes for new kinds of music that I might not hear otherwise.

The only "problem" is that there are so many bands/songs that it can be overwhelming. 764 songs may not seem like a lot, but its actually around 48 hours of music, which means you can listen to the torrent straight for two days without listening to the same song once.

I love a lot of different kinds of music, but I don't enjoy listening to ALL kinds of music. (Screaming? Seriously?) So I take the time to go through each song and decide the merits of it and whether I will keep it. In previous years I've kept about 115-145 songs so assuming I keep that many I'll be throwing away 600 songs. This task can seem daunting, and even though I'd prefer to not judge a song by the first few seconds, I will often times do just that. And honestly, there aren't too many songs that aren't well represented within those first few seconds.

My original post was going to be about the importance of making first impressions very important because it may be all your target audience gets to experience. While this is useful and true, I actually think there's a little more to this than might be obvious.

One thing that I've really taken away from reading Seth Godin's blog(s) over the last number of years is that its not necessarily the number of customers you have, but the kind/quality of customers you have that is the most important. The bands that scream and have the jarring guitar riffs don't (or at least shouldn't) want me to necessarily listen to their music. I'm not the customer that will say "Oh, this music is AWESOME! I must listen to more, buy the t-shirt, and buy tickets to as many concerts as I can." I might even bad mouth their music, cause I either don't understand it or just don't like it. This band can try and win me over as a customer/listener to their music, but I guarantee that would take way more work than its worth. Instead they need to focus on the people that already enjoy their kind of music.

This means that it is more important to be truthful about your self/band/company/church/God in those first impressions than it is just trying to impress them. If your goal is to try and impress with your first impression than you are probably trying to hit the lowest common denominator to attract the most amount of people. When you go that route you please nobody.

The point is to be truthful and build the trust that will win you long term customers.