How Gibson Flushed Les Paul Down The Toilet
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010Owning a Gibson guitar is like owning a BMW.
It’s a statement.
For BMW, the “German Engineering” stamp is impervious to Lexus.
For Gibson, “Made In The USA” is just as sacred.
It takes decades to establish the reputation that Gibson has achieved.
Yet only minutes to flush it down the toilet.
Gibson, like many heritage brands, engaged itself with a young spunky marketing consultant that dazzled its management team with social media catchwords like “viral”, “buzz” and “tweet”.
How the conversation went down:
Spunky Consultant: “You’re doing everything wrong. Everything!”
Gibson Management: “We are? Sales are up. Overhead is down. What do you mean?”
Spunky Consultant: “Sales Shmales. It’s not about the money, it’s about your brand equity!”
Gibson Management: “Sales Shmales?”
Spunky Consultant: “You want to connect with your fans, engage with your customers and create a conversation around you, see?”
Gibson Management: “Will that increase sales?”
Spunky Consultant: “Forget sales already. I’m going to get you buzz. You do want buzz, don’t you?”
Gibson Management: “Does buzz increase sales?”
Spunky Consultant: “Look, do you want followers or not?”
Gibson Management: “I… guess… that… we… do…”
Spunky Consultant: “Great! Make the check out to…”
So what happened the next day?
Gibson launched a new website that displays each of its exquisite instruments in the light that they deserve. Best of all, on every page of the website, beneath the featured instrument, they included threaded comments (like on YouTube) where visitors can comment on the featured guitar and the community can vote the comment up or down.
This is spunky, dynamic, web 2.0-ish online social media marketing at its finest!
Except for one thing…
The most popular comments, those that received the largest number of votes, make Gibson look like a Buick, not a luxury premium.
One comment in particular, truly struck a chord with me. Here it is at No. 1 with 452 votes for the Gibson Les Paul Dusk Tiger:
I can see the salesmen at Guitar Center now: Salesman: “Hey man check out the new Gibson Dusk Tiger! It’s got all of these amazing features!” Customer: “It looks kinda stupid.” Salesman: “Yeah but it tunes itself! You can dial in any tone you want on this baby!” Customer: “Can you dial in a less stupid looking finish? My band will laugh at me if I turn up to a gig with that thing” Salesman: “It only comes in the one color, but it’s LIMITED EDITION! There’s only gonna be 1000 of these made!” Customer: “I think it’s a limited edition because there’s a limited market for these things. Even then I doubt that there are enough guys out there wearing the leather pants, wolf t-shirt and eye makeup necessary to look as stupid as this guitar. And those guys usually don’t have $4000 to waste on what is basically a gimmicky Les Paul dressed as a gay tiger, so you’re going to have a hard time selling these, aren’t you?” Salesman: “Like you would not believe”
Where do you think Gibson went wrong with its online marketing strategy?
IEG, a global leader in sponsorship consulting services, valuation and measurement, published promising figures for US music sponsorship spending for 2009, in spite of the current economic climate. The 
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