I found it amusing that pop performer Lady Gaga wowed thousands last night in Vancouver while just across and down the street her business soulmate – Cirque De Soleil – was also performing.
Amusing doesn't apply to the performances. It applies to people's view of the two entities.
For this show, and several others on the Canadian leg of Gaga's tour, analysis ranged from fevered homage for Gaga as the new post modern woman, to attacks on her for poor musicianship, to likening her show to musical theatre, to a truly absurd pseudo analysis that pointed out Gaga was merely a front for a carefully staged show. Duh!
But Cirque de Soleil draws nothing but raves for its stylized and athletic performances.
Both are entertainment enterprises, pure and simple. And we can all learn something from them.
Personally, I love Lady Gaga. I like anyone who can answer a critic with the line: "I stand in my underwear in front of thousands every night, so do you really think I give a shit what you think?" My kind of woman.
But mostly I'm gaga for Gaga because she and her team are great business people. Just like Cirque De Soleil.
I put them together, not just for the obvious – that they stage elaborate performances in phenomenal costumes that anger and delight -- but because they're both masterful examples of innovative thinking that are raking in millions of dollars.
Cirque de Soleil was lionized in the 2005 book Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne because it exemplified a blue ocean strategy, part of which is to combine two different things, and eliminate the extraneous from each of them. Cirque de Soleil combined the circus with theatre production.
Gaga's team – and I have no doubt there is a strong and smart team of pros behind her – combine musical theatre (think Phantom of the Opera) with musical influences such as hip hop and pop, videos, and social media to offer memorable performances. And, apparently, it's successful. Gaga has earned numerous awards and sold millions of record. Her current tour is reportedly earning the team some $200 million.
So how can you apply the Lady Gaga methodology to your business?
Analyse your product or service, eliminate all the traditional trappings, and go to the core of what you're doing. Then combine that core with some other format to form a new system -- of delivery, or usage, of pricing, whatever.
As an example of this thinking, look at cloud computing. Software designers eliminated the traditional, and expensive, CD that was installed on client computers, and combined their software with the ease of the Internet to create Software as a Service. If there is any other kind of software use in future, I'd be surprised.
The goal of this strategy is to stand out from competitors, to provide some new kind of value to increasingly jaded and suspicious customers.
If you can do that, they may go gaga over you.
