This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation on marketing with Adam Wilson.
In this episode John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) has an engaging conversation with Adam Wilson, co-founder of the boutique advertising agency, D/Cal. Adam’s portfolio includes work for global brands like Gibson, Carhartt, and Wolverine Boots. Adam founded D/Cal with skateboard legend and entrepreneur Tony Hawk, which brings a unique perspective to understanding target markets and subcultures.
With over 25 years of experience, Adam shares invaluable insights into the conceptual aspects of marketing, including brand building, logos, and colors, in part one of our discussion. Even if you don’t have a marketing background, Adam’s explanations are clear and informative. In part two, he offers practical advice that music lesson businesses can readily apply.
We delve into the importance of understanding your audience, crafting effective messaging, and distinguishing between branding and marketing. Adam also emphasizes the emotional connection and consumer empathy crucial for any successful brand. This episode is packed with actionable tips to help you elevate your music school’s marketing strategy.
In this episode:
- Understanding marketing and branding, and the differences between the terms
- Exploring brand identity
- How emotional connection guides both your brand identity and consumer purchasing habits
- Creative messaging for music schools and lesson businesses
In Part 2, Adam and John discuss practical applications for music school, as well as a usable social media strategy.
Episode Transcript:
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Welcome to the Rock School Proprietor Podcast. I’m John Kozicki.
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On this episode, I sat down to talk with my friend Adam Wilson.
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Adam’s co-founder of an agency called Decal. They’re a boutique advertising
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agency, so it means they handle things like marketing, branding,
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and advertising for some pretty big global brands.
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Adam’s worked for companies like Gibson, Carhartt, Wolverine Boots, and tons more.
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He actually founded Decal with Tony Hawk,
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yes, that Tony Hawk, which I think becomes really important in our conversation
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when Adam starts talking about understanding target markets and the importance
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of that and countercultures.
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So point is, Adam knows his stuff, and he has over 25 years of experience as his track record.
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We had a great conversation with tons of information, so I split this episode into two parts.
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Part one, Adam explains, I guess, more conceptual aspects of marketing,
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things like building your brand and logos and colors.
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And Adam just does a really great job explaining things, even if you don’t have
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a marketing background.
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Then in part two, Adam provides more practical advice, things that music lesson
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businesses can use and apply.
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I do think it’s important to listen to part one before part two,
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so you do have that background.
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Music.
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To the rock school proprietor podcast i’m john
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kazicki and our co-host mandy
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york is not with us today but we’ve got a guest guest is
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adam wilson adam is
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co-founder of decal
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detroit is that oh just decal d slash cal
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okay and you are a would you
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say you’re a marketing expert you’re advertising branding what
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yeah i know it’s i’m of course allergic to
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the word expert i own it
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excuse me i have 26 years in marketing and
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advertising either at ad agencies
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or at one point i got to pull the you
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know pull all the levers as a brand marketing leader on the corporate side running
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brand marketing at carhartt so so decal is a small boutique as as they call
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them ad agency so what i really like about decal and the clients you serve and the work that you do,
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it’s i mean you know all the creatives all branding agencies kind of think like
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oh we’re edgy we’re we’re like out there and we’re different i i definitely
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see that with all of your work you You sort of push the envelope on a lot of things.
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And we got to know each other. Well, I mean, we’ve been friends for a while,
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but we got to know each other when you were working on a project for Gibson,
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Gibson Guitars. That’s right. Yeah.
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Yeah. Which kind of illustrates the thing we do.
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I mean, I’m not here to plug our agency, but, you know, I’ve always had a love-hate
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relationship with the ad agency industry.
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Oftentimes it’s, you know, it’s just, it’s just too much sometimes, but.
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You know, we wanted to make sure that we’re paying attention to subcultures
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versus solely demographics, right?
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Like marketers spend a lot of time thinking about household income and education
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and regionality and gender and all that stuff.
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And it’s like, well, first of all, human beings don’t like at a dinner party,
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you know, like that’s not how you get to know people.
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Right. Well, there are those people, but we generally try to avoid those,
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I think. But yeah, it’s really about subcultures, which is a bougie way of saying
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the things people are actually interested in.
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And so we end up with clients like Gibson, which is a fairly endemic thing.
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It’s a very, it’s a vertical, right?
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It’s a very specific kind of brand and products and all that.
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But one of the things that we like to do is bring in agency outsiders.
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I mean, our agency is co-founded by Tony Hawk, who kind of represents the agency outsider.
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They are people who understand subcultures.
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Tony understands skate culture. He understands punk culture,
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which there’s a bunch of overlap there.
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And our feeling is if you kind of understand one subculture,
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you’re a quick study on all of them because they, most of them have a similar framework.
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They have similar archetypes. It doesn’t matter what subculture it is.
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It could be gardening or it could be guitar playing.
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There’s always the purest archetype.
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Right. Okay. Who doesn’t want anything new to happen. Okay.
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I’m going to draw while you’re describing these. And again, this is why I think.
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Well, this is why we brought you in. Yeah. This is why we brought you in.
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Well, and this is why I brought you in right now.
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Yes, tit for tat. So the traditional archetype, right?
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In the music lesson world, that’s going to be—well, so I’ve told this story
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before on previous episodes, but I had music lessons—I had piano lessons when I was a kid.
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I rode my bike to this old lady’s house who lived in our neighborhood every
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week and I hated it and like I you know as soon as I could I got back on my
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bike and went back to play with my friends,
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that’s like that traditional style of music lessons and you know I try not to
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be offensive to that because there is a place for that there is a place for
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that that’s not what I do at Michigan Rock School,
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but that’s going to be like what you just identified as kind of the more traditional.
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Yeah. Yeah. No, I would, I would agree.
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I mean, there are, there are traditional ways of doing everything.
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It doesn’t matter if it’s marketing or music lessons.
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And then there’s, it really comes down to like, you know, what kind of learner
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are you? Right. You know, I mean, I was terrible in school.
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Right. Which is the closest thing to your experience with, you know,
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riding your bike. It was a thing you had to do. It was a commitment.
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I mean, those are words that should fit in the vernacular of the, of your approach.
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They certainly do. but it’s it’s
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very it’s very sort of rudimentary and and you
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know there are lots of millions of kids i was
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one that just just get me in there i just
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want to start doing you know i’m not i’m not afraid to fail
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by just doing it wrong first well
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and and i i think and i don’t know if this
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fits into what you were saying with the archetypes but that
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failure is is a big part of the learning Right.
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Like who you really want is steve connelly who’s
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right there in the middle yeah who’s who’s able to sort of mix both
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but i i think on on
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like on that spectrum there has
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to be the well let’s just do it and and
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learn from that versus study all
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you can first and then you can actually do the activity then you can play music
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right yeah so i mean as far as i think we’re already deviating from where we’re
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going with this but i mean the primary reason that that i want to talk to you is because.
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Most music school owners are musicians
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and most of them may not have a background in marketing or you know very little
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background in marketing or they’re learning about marketing or business How
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can you describe to a music lesson studio owner, what is marketing?
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What’s the difference between branding and marketing and advertising?
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And like, how can they start to unpackage that? Yeah. And you know what,
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that’s, that’s not uncommon among entrepreneurs who have a business.
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So whether it’s music schools or an ice cream store, probably the biggest misnomer
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is their logo is their brand.
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And, you know, and that’s, you know, you see the light bulb go off when with,
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with certain people where it’s like, well, that’s, that’s your brand mark.
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I mean, it’s a logo, but you know, you’re.
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In my opinion, the best and simplest way to talk about the difference between
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what a brand is and what marketing is, because they are very interrelated,
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your brand is really why you exist.
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It should be. I’m a big Simon Sinek fan. Oh, yeah, I am, too.
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I’ve quoted Simon many, many times. Yeah.
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And, you know, if anyone out there listening and you’re and you want to you
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want to get into this realm of, you know, what is my brand?
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It can sound a little foofy, but it’s really true.
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You really start with why do you exist? I know why you run this rock school.
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I know why you want to get kids playing together. Right.
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Exactly. Right? And if you ask what Apple’s why was, I think it went something
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like, if anyone looks up Simon Sinek and Googles it after this,
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they’ll find the Apple example. Yeah. Right?
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Why do you exist? We exist to, I think it was like, you know,
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help people change the world or help people be creative. Mm-hmm.
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They haven’t mentioned that they make computers yet. Right. You know?
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And then it’s like, well, then how do you do that?
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Oh, well, we give people the tools they need to be creative and more efficient and blah, blah, blah.
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And then finally you get to what it is you do. What is it you make?
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Oh, we just happen to make computers.
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Yeah. And phones and whatever. So whatever your feelings are on Apple…
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That same sequence can be applied to your rock school business or really to
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any business. You just got to figure out why you exist.
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And that, you write a little manifesto, write a little paragraph of why you
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exist. Don’t talk about the lessons.
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Don’t talk about the transactional stuff right away.
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Really figure out what is your thing that makes you unique and why you exist in the first place.
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That’s your brand. Then all the accoutrements around it should exude that.
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It doesn’t mean quite literally mean your logo needs to be a bunch of kids playing music together.
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Right. It doesn’t have to be that on the nose. But the cut your cut the colors
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the fonts you’re using all of that.
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Those are all pieces of the puzzle that make your brand. Yeah.
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Marketing is how you take that to the world. Mm hmm.
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That’s that’s really that’s really it. So marketing is more of like a conduit, right?
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You’ve got your why, you’ve got your, well, all those pieces that you mentioned, like your logo,
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what are your colors, the overall look, and what is your passion for what you
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do? How do you explain the passion for what you do?
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Marketing is like, now how are you going to push that out and find the people
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who that’s going to resonate with? Right.
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And then, you know, and under that, when you lift up that hood,
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especially these days, it’s a myriad of things, you know, everything from then,
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you know, that’s when that’s when a lot of the questions start popping up. Right.
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Like how much Google AdWords should I be doing and how much email should I be
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doing? Do I need a CRM program? Right.
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You know, it just becomes like more acronyms than the military.
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You know, and then how about social media? And, you know, all of that stuff
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fits under that marketing bucket.
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There’s just so many choices available, especially now.
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So the, I gotta be honest when I, I mean, this was.
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I don’t know, like maybe 10 years ago when I was first starting Michigan Rock School.
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And I don’t know if you knew this about me, Adam, but this is actually my second
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music school. So I ran another music school before this.
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And, you know, someone had challenged me to kind of define my brand identity.
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And I, you know, it was hard. Like, I didn’t understand.
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You know, it’s hard to wrap my brain around it. I didn’t really start to get
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it until I started talking to parents in my music school about why I play music,
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why I started to play music, why I started to teach music, what are the things
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that I do in my music school to inspire kids to play music.
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And when I started talking about all those things that really had nothing to
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do with teaching music, it was more about like, well, I want people to get in
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a room together and I want to make music.
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I want them to, as we were saying before, I want them to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.
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I want them to get praise from other people when they’re playing music.
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I want them to find friendships and other kids that they can connect about music
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and play music together.
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Those are all the things that I realized like, oh, okay, now I’m starting to
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figure out what my brand identity is.
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It’s taking those things and being able to articulate them in a really concise way.
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And then I started understanding, oh, well, that’s my brand, right?
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That’s my brand identity. It’s you can’t you don’t have to imagine something
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that that is going to be the tagline on your website or whatever.
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You don’t have to like pull it out of the air. It’s it’s like it’s already there.
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You just have to figure out what it is. Right. Yeah.
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You know, like, I think I need, I think I need music lessons.
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I think I need to understand where to put my fingers.
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I think I need, I want to, I want to understand how to make sounds.
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But then we go like a level deeper.
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Usually they want to do those things because they want to play their favorite songs.
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Right. Right. Yeah. And maybe you go a level deeper than that.
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That they want to learn their favorite songs because they’re a couple other
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friends who have already learned a couple songs and it seems like fun and it
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seems like they want to do that so.
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From a branding perspective like i don’t i don’t necessarily talk about the
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music lessons i start talking about these other things is that a good idea well
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boy this is i mean that’s really loaded Because, you know, disclaimer, I am a customer.
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My daughter goes to this school. Yeah. Yeah. Disclaimer. Yeah.
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But no, I think that’s I think that’s being true to the brand that you’ve created.
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Mm hmm. You’re you’re you’re being demonstrative, which is the best thing for a brand to do.
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I’ve I still maintain one of our things is, you know, what a what a brand does
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can often be more powerful than what it says. And so you are the embodiment of the brand.
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When you’re talking to parents here, you leading with the output,
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you’re leading with what the outcome ought to be. Yeah. Right. Not the inputs.
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And that is, that is the most basic fundamental mistake.
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Even the most seasoned marketers will make at giant global fortune 500 companies.
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They, they talk about the inputs. Yeah.
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Versus the outputs in the, in the product world or the brand world,
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you would be, this would be, you know, Clorox talking about how they make the
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bleach and, and, and the new container it’s in and blah, blah, blah.
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When they should really be leading with the consumer benefit.
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Right. Like, look how clean your toilet is. It’s a lighter clothes and it’s
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not going to spill all over the place when you pour it into the thing.
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Cause we have a new spout or whatever. Right.
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So it’s, you’re doing, you’re doing the same thing. So I would say keep doing
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that. Like lead with the outcome.
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You’ll eventually get to what the schedule’s like and the kind of instruments and all of that.
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Well, and there’s an emotionality to that, too. I mean, human beings are emotional creatures.
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So brands really need to have I mean, you your your why is it comes from an emotive place.
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You want kids to experience the joy that you and I both know.
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I’m a late bloomer, but I know it now and how wonderfully addictive and the
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things it does to your brain and all the melatonin or serotonin, you know,
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all the good juices that flow from playing with other, making music with other people.
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You’ve built your center of gravity around that. And that is what you talk to parents first.
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And it also, sorry, also I think is a good filter.
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Because I think you’ll very quickly identify the parents whose hearts are in
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the right place. Well, so you mentioned that you start with that stuff,
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you’ll get to the scheduling, right?
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You’ll get to what times are available.
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And I think where, and again, it took me a long time to understand this,
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but where I think a lot of maybe music studio owners fall into a trap is when
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they get a phone call from someone looking for music lessons.
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Or they get an email from someone looking for music lessons.
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Usually the question from that person, typically a parent, is,
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hey, I’m looking for guitar lessons for my 10-year-old kid.
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What days and times are available, right? Right. And so the easy answer is you
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look at the schedule and you say, oh, well, these times are available.
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And any of those work, you know, or how about this time?
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Right. You haven’t like you said, you haven’t qualified that student or the family.
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They haven’t qualified you, which is more important. Right.
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Because from a parent’s perspective, they might not know what questions to ask. Yeah.
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So they lead with the only thing they know to ask, which is,
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how do I work this into my schedule? And then, and like how much does it cost?
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Massive youth what you just said is massive
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consumer empathy that’s just
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uncommon you you’re you’re giving them the benefit of the
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doubt because it’s true they don’t know what to ask and especially if they’re
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not musicians themselves or haven’t played themselves this can feel like a very
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this it’s like like the kid that walks into the skate shop for the first time
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yes even even though even though everyone there is so happy to see them and
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is not going Generally speaking,
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not going to ridicule them because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
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There’s still a little bit of that, a little anxiety.
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I’m sure you experienced that with the parents. So I think you’re right.
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That is a natural first question for them or first set of questions for them to ask. Right.
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So and I think Manny and I have talked about this, too, is as as like a provider
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of music lessons, whether it’s private music lessons or groups or rock bands or whatever,
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you have an opportunity to help that parent understand,
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well, what are you looking for?
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You can be the guide, right, as opposed to just answering their question,
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like, which, you know, is it going to help your studio?
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Well, yeah, you might book a student, but it might not be the best fit for either side.
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So we got a little tangential.
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May I ask you? Yeah. So what do you do?
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Because in my mind, that’s an opportunity without being off-putting to essentially say.
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We’ve got a lot of different ways to do this, but first and foremost,
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this is all geared to get them to play together and to make music together. Yeah.
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So what I do. Then all of a sudden that signals to the parent that like,
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oh, there’s a little more to this and you might get them leaning in a bit.
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Yes. What I do personally is I say,
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oh, is this, are you looking for music lessons for yourself or a child?
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Child and as a child well tell me about tell me
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about your kid you know what’s their name how old are they what kind of music
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do they like so i just start a conversation sure right and and by starting the
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conversation then we’re not even talking about schedule yet because again we’ll
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get to the schedule and having a conversation then they can start to understand what we’re all about,
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and i can understand what they’re looking for because i mean for my studio again we specialize
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and we do rock bands well and private lessons are
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part of what we do but if they’re
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just looking for that you know mrs connelly real traditional style of piano
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lessons for instance well i want to know that they need to know that that’s
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not what we do right so we’ve got to get to that so i can say like if it’s not
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what we do well let me make recommendations for yeah for someone else. Right. Yeah.
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Okay. Again, you got kind of on a tangent. This is great, but- Why does that
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happen? I mean, yeah, right?
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So what I wanted to get into was some of the common,
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some of the common messaging I see from music schools and how they can maybe
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start to get a little bit more creative with their messaging.
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You know, I’ll often see things that music schools putting out messages that say something like,
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hey, music lessons lead to better test scores in school for the kids who take
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the music lessons or kids who take music lessons are better at math.
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Math and all that stuff is very on the nose
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right because i i think we’ve all
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seen those those blogs or or those
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articles online and we click on it like oh music lessons
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better test scores for kids i’m in like as a parent you’re like i want my kid
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to have better test scores and then as a as a music lesson provider we that
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resonates with us we say like oh parents are They’re looking for things that
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are going to benefit their kids, not just the music lessons.
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And again, we just talked about how important that is,
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but how do you think a music lesson studio could maybe present that information
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where it’s not so like on the nose?
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Sure. And maybe not even like a promise that they can make and keep.
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You know what I’m saying?
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Because if they’re making like, this is our brand promise or positioning it
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that way, we don’t really know if that’s going to happen.
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I mean, part of marketing, a big part of marketing is really understanding your audience.
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And I know that sounds cliche and probably very expected, but,
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you know, marketers are really good at stereotyping, putting people in little
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tiny buckets. We call them buckets, marketing buckets or segmentation or whatever.
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But, you know, and you and I have talked about this a little bit,
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especially when we were working on that project for Gibson, but it doesn’t,
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it wouldn’t hurt for any…
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Any business like yours, any rock school, music school, other proprietors out
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there to just take a minute and sit down.
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You don’t have to do exhaustive research and write a little profile,
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like create an archetype. Some marketers call those personas.
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Yeah. Give them a name. Well, you’ve got a name for the music school teacher. Right. Give them a name.
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You guys know them, right? And I could be wrong here, but there’s going to be
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the, well, let’s call them competitive Kathy. Kathy, she’s the helicopter mom
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who really wants the best for her child, but she’s very competitive.
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She’s going to be one of those moms or dads that does all of the college entrance
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pre-work because she wants their kid to get in the best school.
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They get tutoring because they want their, they’re just, they want their kid,
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they want the best for their kid.
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Of course, there’s different flavors of competitive Kathy as I’m calling her right now.
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Now but that might be the
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persona that resonates with
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the way that particular rock school example
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you gave me yeah is is messaging i love
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that right but it might
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be off-putting to the other another persona
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that’s probably out there it’s let’s call it the ex-rocker
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or you know the the dad who played or does play or someone who’s been in the
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in in the in the realm in the neighborhood of musicians and and under already
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knows understands the the real benefit the real emotional benefit the camaraderie
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and the just what it feels like to play together.
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That that messaging might be off-putting to them and it
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might be off-putting to maybe another archetype that i won’t waste
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your podcast time here like developing archetypes yeah
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out of thin air but the point is develop
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those archetypes and they don’t have to be right on and it might feel a little
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icky stereotyping people but for the most part if there’s one type there’s many
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more types like that and and you probably know who they are you have to really
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think about is this messaging right for them.
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Now, that messaging, they could be a more sophisticated marketer.
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They could live in an area of, I’m not saying affluent areas equals lots of
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these competitive helicopter parents, but my guess is there’s probably a fair correlation there.
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That messaging might work for that area they’re in and the kind of clientele
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that they’re bringing in. Yeah.
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Or they’re a really sophisticated marketer and they know how to make sure that
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message is only hitting that archetype.
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I love this i love this i’m gonna i’m
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gonna try and simplify it i’m gonna try and like boil it
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down and get like condensed yeah so for
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for any music teacher or
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music studio owner you already have clients you already talk to those clients
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maybe identify the two or three of the clients that you already have that you
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have conversations with and you’re like those Those are my favorite.
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Those are my favorite parents.
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That’s my favorite kid to work with.
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How do you have those? What do you talk about with those people?
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Right. And that, like, write it down. Like, we had a conversation about this.
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We had a conversation about this. This conversation was great.
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Absolutely. That’s how you start to identify your messaging for your target
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market because they’re already in your studio.
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You just have to then start pushing
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those messages out based on the conversations you’ve already
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had that’s then going to attract people who
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are like that right yeah it’s it’s it’s i think that’s really great advice i
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mean it’s essentially you’re doing your market research your audience research
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in real time by virtue of running your business so you know these you know these
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people so if you You can identify those types,
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like you said, and line up your messaging to what you know they care about.
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And we all know that every kid is different. There’s different motivations.
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Every family dynamic is different. Every parent is different. But…
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To put your marketing hat on, you kind of have to go, you have to find trends
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and you have to find, you have to identify archetypes and at least place bets there, you know.
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Coming up on part two of my conversation with Adam Wilson.
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Everyone’s going through the same thing. I don’t have enough time in the day
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to do all of these things, right? Right.
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And a lot of that is just whether they know it or not, they’re harboring a bunch
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of anxiety over what do I post?
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What do I say next? What do I do next?
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The answer is already there if you’ve done that documentation.
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Oh, that’s right. I need a brand post.
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Well, at least you’ve narrowed it down. If you have topic suggestions or questions,
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please contact us at info at rockschoolproprietor.com. We’d love to hear from
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you and consider those ideas for the show.
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Show notes and transcripts, as always, are available at rockschoolproprietor.com.
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I’m at rock.school.proprietor on Instagram, if you’d like to connect with me
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there, and on LinkedIn as John Kozicki.
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If you enjoyed the show and gained insight from our conversations,
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then we count that as a win. All we ask in return is that you pay it forward.
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Share the show with someone you think needs to hear it.
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Music.
