My friend Mark is a middle school band director.
He would tell you that he’s living the dream. He would also tell you that there are (at least) two problems with middle school bands: First, most 11 years olds aren’t very good at their instruments yet. Second, the ones who aren’t very good often don’t realize it.
A youth band director has to make tough decisions to get the best out of the group without hurting students’ feelings.
Mark once had a trumpet player who couldn’t reach the high notes. Well, it wasn’t that the kid couldn’t reach them, but that he wasn’t practicing enough to keep up with everyone else, and it was dragging the whole section down. No matter what Mark did he couldn’t convince this kid to practice more.
So he decided to take a different approach. One day he took the kid aside and said,
“Listen, there are 10 trumpet players in this band. We don’t need 10 trumpet players. It’s chaos. But we don’t have a baritone, and I’ve got all these songs with super cool baritone parts that we can’t play. If you’d be willing to switch to baritone, you’d really be helping us do something special.”
The kid switched and, just like that, started practicing like a rockstar.
You are a Marketer (even if you don’t want to be)
The Internet and, more specifically, social media, has given every person on the planet the ability to represent themselves, and their ideas, to the world as they see fit.
The average person’s voice is now just as powerful as the largest corporation, because a message, a Tweet, can spread the world over in seconds, for free.
There are no more barriers to entry. The gatekeepers are gone. And so we have a new question: Not IF I can create change, but what change do I want to create?
When you interview for a job that you are passionate about, you’re marketing yourself.
When you convince your friends to stop using plastic straws because you want to protect our environment, you are marketing an idea.
When Mark convinced his student to switch to baritone, he was marketing. By reframing the situation and handing the kid an instrument more suited to him (baritones operate in a lower register than trumpets), he changed a frustrated trumpet player who wanted to be a part of the group but didn’t want to do the work, into a stand-out baritone player who lifted everybody up, and felt like he belonged more than ever before.
Your Superpower
Marketing is not good or bad. Like all tools it depends on how you use it. There are always going to be people who use the power of persuasion to market harmful substances to children. The beauty of the connection era is that you have the resources to fight back with an even more powerful message.
You have the power to create change.
So ask yourself: What would you like to be different by this time next year?
Get to it.
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