3 Lessons Content Marketers Can Learn From Elton John

There aren’t too many recording artists who have had a better run at the start of their careers than Elton John did in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

His first five albums—“Empty Sky,” “Elton John,” “Tumbleweed Connection,” “Madmen Across the Water,” and “Honky Château”—were released in a four-year span and feature some of the most flawless music ever made.

Of course, Bernie Taupin deserves equal share of the credit for penning such memorable lyrics as “Piano man he makes his stand/In the auditorium/Looking on she sings the songs/The words she knows, the tune she hums.” Their collaboration is still going strong and continues to be an antidote to the slick, overproduced poison that is this generation’s reduced attention span-inspired pop music.

What does this have to do with content marketing, you ask?

I’m on record as saying one should evaluate quality content the same way one does great music.

A branded message should have the same type of staying power in your mind as a truly legendary mix of lyrics and melodies, but absolutely not in the same way as “Call Me Maybe” or “Gangham Style.”

You want your content to have a shelf life longer than 15 seconds. 

You may not hit the high note every time out, but if you’re not attempting to blow the socks off your reader every time you hit the stage, you’re in the wrong business.

In that spirit, let me offer a few lessons from Elton John on how you can strengthen your contenting marketing message.

Take Me to the Pilot of Your Content Marketing Soul

From the first pounding note of this song, your attention is at its mercy.

Your heart starts racing as its words hit you over the head over and over again. You can’t help but immediately move some part of your body to the rhythm. Your pulse thunders as the song triumphantly builds to the point where you’re fist pumping walking down the street. It’s the type of music that makes you want to listen to it impulsively and on repeat for days on end until you end up in a catatonic state of musical ecstasy.

That’s the type of content you need to be creating for your audience.

The catchy, cute, and commercial jingles of yesteryear should be left in the junkyard of bad marketing ideas.

There were reasons why everyone freaked out when Bob Dylan “sold out” to Apple and Victoria’s Secret. One of music’s most mercurial, anti-establishment artists lent his brand to two of the biggest companies in the United States, and the ads were wildly successful because of the high quality of the music. As a Dylan-fanatic, I was predisposed to rock out to “Someday Baby” in the Apple ad, but even if I wasn’t, the song choice, choreography of the dancers (and Dylan himself), mixed with the cinematography that matched Apple’s product design would have made me stop in my tracks and think, “This company gets it.”

Like a good piece of literature, the first moments of a marketing message are the best chances one has at making a rock star impression.

Be the master of your opening stanza and the rest of your message will seem like a piece of cake, garnering your audience’s undying devotion.

Be Madmen Across the Water

Elton John’s album “Madman Across the Water” contains epic songs like “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon.” Both aren’t drastic deviations from the music he had created up to this point.

However, there is something about the title track that made it stand apart from the rest of the songs on the album for me. There are more ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys to this song than a teenager’s first romance. The listener is pulled in so many different directions that you almost start to think you might be the madman Elton John is singing about.

By the time you’re done listening to the song, you’re not quite sure what journey you’ve just been on, but you know that despite how crazy it might have been, it’s one you wouldn’t mind going on again.

The takeaway from this song is that it’s okay for your company to embrace its inner mental patient every now and again.

It’s perfectly acceptable to be a little crazy and run your audience through a gauntlet of emotion. Just make sure it’s done as effectively as this song. You don’t want your message to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. You want to bring your brand follower to a place that turns them into groupies; not abandon them in a cloud of electric Kool-Aid acid tests that erases their memory of your performance.

Strive for a Message That Will Live Sixty Years On

If you’ve followed the first two lessons, this one should happen organically.

Elton John opened his 60th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden on March 25, 2007 with the song “Sixty Years On.” The song first appeared on his self-titled hit record released in 1970. It had been resonating with Elton fans for 37 years at the point he started belting it out on the Garden’s stage. That’s one hell of a shelf life for a message.

Of course, all brands are actively searching for this type of staying power for their messages.

Nike, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Folgers all have marketing campaigns that still revolve around slogans and ideas that were created decades ago. The reason those brands can keep going to the well without their marketing getting stale is that their original ideas were rooted in strong content. If you start with something good, odds are you’ll have an easier time creating good content throughout the life of your company.

I caution that sometimes it can take awhile to find your “Just Do It” or “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup,” but as long as that’s your expectation and you work hard to achieve it, it will happen.

Now listen to “Where to Now St. Peter?” from “Tumbleweed Connection” and go unleash your content marketing team’s inner musician.

[image: Heinrich Klaffs]