The perceptions of Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons
May 13, 2009
Bill Simmons is one of my favorite sportswriters (thanks to my old roommate Stephen for introducing him to me), and Malcolm Gladwell is the funny and insightful author of books The Tipping Point, Blink, and most recently Outliers.
What I didn’t know is that these guys know each other and love to rap about sports, and they have an oddly similar way of being both extremely perceptive about people and human nature – and highly talented at communicating their observations in writing. They are also both very in tune with pop culture and have a great way of mixing their worlds (sports and behavioral psychology) with the familiar in order to make it easier to understand, and more entertaining to read.
The most recent tangle between these two is posted on ESPN.com today, and it’s a great read. My favorite part, predictably, is where they compare sports teams to musical teams (bands). A couple excerpts:
Simmons:
And in my opinion, LeBron [James] has a chance to be U2 or Springsteen in Cleveland. Now that he’s winning, and now that the Cavs know how to build around his personality — in a nutshell, finding complementary players who won’t be threatened by him, enjoy basketball, enjoy life and aren’t afraid of failing — this could just go on and on for as long as he wants. Other stars will take less to play with him. Older players will take the minimum just to play with them for one season. Basically, it will be like Bruce deciding, “Hey guys, we’re going on tour again,” and the rest of the E Streeters dropping whatever they were doing to join him. Why? Because you don’t turn down Bruce Springsteen.
Gladwell:
And that’s the thing I worry about with LeBron. You say that this could go on for as long as he wants, but the truth is these things rarely go on for as long as anyone wants. U2 is a weird exception. In most cases, John turns on Paul, Axl gets fat and Kurt Cobain commits suicide.
Feeling what the artist felt . . .
May 12, 2009
Never heard it expressed so succinctly and accurately. This is what art is all about. (via Buzzfeed)
The New Word-of-Mouth Marketing Infrastructure?
April 29, 2009
This article was originally posted on Powered’s blog, The Engaged Consumer.
The role of a proprietary community environment for the purposes of marketing (or social marketing program) has been hotly debated among brand marketers and social media insiders. We know that social sites are more engaging (people spend more time on them) than non-social, and marketers want to tap into that power.
So as a marketer, do you build your own community, or do you join others’? If you decide to build a community, what is the best marketing application – a community for your Loyalty Program, a community for building Insight into consumers that Market Research uses, an educational community for those considering your products that is more of a Direct Marketing play?
But it seems like brands are benefiting from building AND joining . . . and we’ve seen applications for social marketing that are generating value along each (and in many cases, all) of the above dimensions.
Something I learned long ago is that if your questions have multiple correct answers, then you might be asking the wrong questions.
The range of marketing value propositions that a branded online community can serve indicates that the community isn’t really appropriate for just one of them – after all, separating “loyalty program” from “acquisition program,” “pre-purchase” from “post-purchase,” is something that marketers do for ourselves. Consumers don’t classify interactions that cleanly. Plus we’re seeing social tools being applied in almost every dimension of a company’s customer-facing business . . .
Ecommerce – Social Commerce / product presence through ratings and reviews by providers like Bazaarvoice
Support - Enhanced Product/Service Support Forums by providers like Lithium
PR/IR - Blogging and corporate presence platforms by providers like Awareness Networks
Focus Groups and Research – Formal deep online market research environments from providers like Communispace
The problem with the above applications is that while they are powerful when a consumer is ready to hear about what you’re selling, they suffer from what I call the “dinner party egomaniac” problem. If they are the only social applications you have, you risk sounding like the person at the dinner party who is only willing to have conversations about themselves – your products, your company, your brand. And if your product or brand isn’t particularly sexy, that problem is exacerbated.
This makes it remarkably difficult to drive brand engagement from third party social environments to your properties. On those sites, consumers are busy talking to and relating to each other about the things that matter to them. They are not in a transactional mindset, and the invasive brand-centric presence there will be no more effective than, and probably less effective than, a 30-second TV spot.
What is needed is a transitional space, a place where consumers can go from third party social engagement to brand engagement naturally. A place that “changes the subject” at the dinner party in a way that Emily Post would approve.
This is where a branded online community can enter in – as the platform that reaches into third party social sites, converting third party social engagement into branded social engagement while retaining the context of consumer needs and aspirations. Branded communities need to be focused at the lifestyle and category level for this reason – it’s where the brand connects to consumers and their conversation.
What makes this easier are technologies that most third party social sites are implementing that allow users to take their identity, relationships, content, and features seamlessly from an unbranded environment to a branded one: like Facebook Connect, for instance.
So perhaps all of these things begin to function together in a new-media word-of-mouth marketing infrastructure, as above. Social enablement of the brand presence in all dimensions, and then a social marketing program where the brand connects with the relevant aspirations and needs of the consumer – and which fields participants from social destinations in powerful new ways that wildly outperform more traditional broadcast marketing channels.
Immediate accountability
April 27, 2009
This past week I had the pleasure of meeting and having coffee with a sharp younger guy who grew up in a very successful family business, and as a result had the opportunity to shoulder a lot of responsibility in that business at a very young age. He seized that opportunity, and as a result he has developed life and business experience well above the average for his age. But despite his accomplishments, he maintains a kind, humble nature and a good sense of humor.
But these are all things I learned about him through an almost hour-long conversation. What I learned about him instantly upon meeting him is that he is a practicing member of the Sikh religion.
Sikhism is a religion that grew out of the Punjabi region of India (and is where most Sikhs live today), and is based on the ideals of honesty, equality, fidelity, meditating on God, and never bowing to tyranny. Despite conflicts with both Hindus and Muslims in the past 100 years, Sikhism is historically a very tolerant religion that has co-existed with other religions for centuries.
But the most striking foundation of the Sikh religion is that Sikh men are required to wear uncut hair, so most Sikhs you meet will have a long beard and a turban on at all times.
The best part of our conversation was when this gentleman told me about his work with the Sikh Research Institute, which is not an evangelical organization, but seeks to spread understanding about the Sikh religion and people in an era prone to religious intolerance.
“When I walk into a room, I feel instant accountability,” he told me. “Not just for my business and my family, but for my faith and people.” We talked about how he looks at the outward expression of his faith not as an obstacle but as an opportunity. Everyone remembers him, for better or worse, and he makes sure it’s for the better.
I couldn’t help but consider how this unavoidable feeling of accountability, and his constant sense of being a part of something much larger than himself, must have played a role in making him the charismatic, warm, and receptive person he is today.
I would join a donut community
April 3, 2009
This article is cross-posted from Powered’s company blog, The Engaged Consumer.
Within Powered, we’ve been mulling over the question “Is Social Marketing for my Company/Brand?” more than usual lately, mostly because we’re working on a white paper addressing that question.
Evaluating your situation as a marketer relative to the social marketing program opportunity is something we’ve addressed a lot in this blog, particularly with Aaron’s popular “Would you Join a Toothpaste Community?” post, along with follow-up posts where Aaron tackled a few challenging products from a community-building perspective. I also sounded off on how the brand is your bridge to community strategy.
But should you build a community? It really comes down to two phases of evaluation. First, is what you’re selling community-worthy? I call this “genetic fit,” because if you’re selling toothpaste, that isn’t going to change overnight, along with other things like your marketplace positioning and branding. Some types of products and services just generate more natural community activity than others.
Second, is your marketing organization and larger company culture in a place where you could pull it off? I call this “cultural fit.” This actually can, and does, change over time – more easily than the genetics do.
But let’s talk about genetic fit, since it’s the one that you really can’t change. And donuts.
I love donuts, but I eat them pretty infrequently – they are something I treat myself to every now and then. Despite my love for the occasional Boston Kreme, I certainly wouldn’t name donuts as one of my passions in life.
So would I (or anyone) join a donut community? Well, maybe for a little while. It would be diverting to go and rate my favorite donuts, debate the virtues of filled donuts over glazed with others, and discover the origin of the bear claw. But would I return again and again over time? Probably not.
Ok, now let’s talk about Dunkin’ Donuts. This changes the discussion a little bit, as I’m now seeing donuts through the prism of a brand. I can visualize Fred the baker from the old commercials getting up and saying “time to make the donuts.” I’m thinking about how good their coffee has always been, along with pretty tasty donuts. Finally, I’m recalling some of the funnier ad spots I’ve seen lately featuring their latest brand campaign “America runs on Dunkin.” Would I join a Dunkin Donuts community? Hmm, a little more interesting than just plain donuts, but again probably not a place where I would return after the initial visit.
But let’s think a bit more about the Dunkin Donuts’ brand. How does Dunkin Donuts get you interested and get you in their store? How do they connect with your needs? A good place is always to start with the tagline – “America runs on Dunkin.” Are they really selling donuts and coffee here, or something more important? Something more basic?
It sounds to me like Dunkin’ Donuts is selling energy. Something that powers you. In a literal sense, the sugar and caffeine is a boost, but energy is something people struggle with – managing your energy level throughout the day is tough. The popularity of energy drinks is escalating rapidly because people are looking for pep. The concept of energy could extend beyond nutrition and the daily grind, too. What about Motivation? Long-term Achievement? Entrepreneurship? These are all principles of energy . . . and things that also fuel the American perspective, a nice tie-in with the tagline. Ok, so what about a community focused on your energy, powered by Dunkin?
Suddenly a fairly compelling community idea is coming into focus that is relevant to the Dunkin’ Donuts brand, and is about something that people care about on a day-to-day basis. I would join this community, and I would come back. Perhaps I would learn and chat about everything from how to avoid the post-lunch doldrums, to the physiological effects of energy drinks, to how to write a business plan for that idea I’ve been trying to get off of the ground. Immediately and over time I would see Dunkin’ Donuts as a bit more than just a brand that makes great donuts, but as the brand that “powers me.” In the end this is what the 30-second spot is trying to do, but this does it in a much more powerful and lasting way.
My involvement in this type of community would significantly affect my Dunkin brand loyalty, and now because the brand isn’t just about donuts to me anymore perhaps they could sell me other things. More products from their expanding home coffee line (perhaps this is the entire initial thrust). An organic energy drink. Baking mixes and cookbooks.
This all started with a donut. And all great brands and businesses start with something that simple. The evolution of your genetics might happen faster and in different directions than you think, dictated by relevant opportunity. Part of understanding what your online community might look like is thinking about what your company might look like, someday.
Open practices
April 2, 2009
I’m not a huge fan of the University of Southern California, mostly for the sole reason that I personally flew to Miami to watch them pummel my Oklahoma Sooners 55-19 in the 2005 Orange Bowl game. But you can’t deny their success as a football program under coach Pete Carroll, who has led their program since 2000.
One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Carroll is that nearly all of his team’s practices are open to the public. Most college coaches guard practices closely, not only because they find that an audience distracts the players – but also because they don’t want competitors sending scouts to study their team.
Carroll finds that an audience helps players get accustomed to the distractions of a real game-time scenario, makes them practice harder, and is fairly dismissive of the potential danger that competitive spies pose. While many attribute this to arrogance (notably those who have watched his team pummel theirs, of which I am certainly not the only one), I believe that Carroll understands the role of execution vs. methodology.
Sure, Carroll isn’t handing anyone his playbook, and he doesn’t allow photography or video at practices, but he is ok with more openness than most because he understands that just because he is revealing how he does it doesn’t mean you can go do the same. You won’t have his experience, you won’t have his athletes, and even if you did you would be starting late. You may learn a lot about his methods, but you won’t be able to outdo him at his own game.
This is a good lesson in business as well. Someone stealing your ideas or you way of doing things is often far less of a threat than you think it is. Because ultimately it’s not about the ideas, it’s about the doing. And ultimately no one can really execute your idea the way you see it better than you.
Being guarded with your ideas can be dangerous, because the more you convince yourself of their value, the less focused you will be on executing on them. You will not benefit from the discussion that sharing ideas brings, and your ideas will not evolve.
Try holding a few open practices, and see what it brings.
Carmax, Twitter, and the open conversation
March 27, 2009
My wife needs a new car. After nearly ten years in the salt-slicked Winter streets of Chicago, her current car is rusted out and destined for the scrap heap.
It’s been over ten years since I’ve bought a car, and while chatting with her about our options she brought up CarMax, the “no haggle” used car lot that seems to be redefining used car-buying. I did a little research and like what they’re saying. They do a 125-point inspection on everything they sell, they flat-price their cars at something that appears average about 10-15% premium over the car’s private-buyer blue book value (which seems reasonable, and half the premium of a standard dealership), and they don’t commission their employees based on individual car sales. Sounds pretty good, but why not ask Twitter? I posed the following question to people that follow me on Twitter:
Me: Anyone have experience with CarMax – good/bad/gotchas? Going to hit them up this weekend.
And the generous Twitter folks got right back to me. Here were the responses:
Dukethug: @DougWick buddy of mine got burned by some BS from carmax a few years ago. Should be interesting to see how desperate they are.
Baldman: @DougWick We bought Sarah’s car at CarMax and loved the experience, including the trade-in of her old one. We’ll buy our next car there.
ScottIngram: @dougwick My CarMax experiences have been positive. Sold a car to them a couple weeks ago. My in-laws bought their car there and are happy.
Atxryan: @DougWick My friend @atxkat bought a car from CarMax and the clutch went out less than a month later. Was not covered by their warranty.
Doogsatx: @DougWick sold my 2002 Protege5 there for the same price I bought it for a year earlier (from diff dealer), so I can’t complain too much…
Ok, so three positive, two negative. I messaged my friend Josh (Dukethug) to get a little more detail on his friend who got burned:
Me: @Dukethug what was the nature of the burning? bad car? pricing? financing? just want to know where to keep my eye . . .
Dukethug: @dougwick iirc, it was a promised service arrangement that was not honored.
Dukethug: @dougwick as in, the car ended up having some problems carmax refused to fix.
It seems like both Dukethug’s and Atxryan’s friends got saddled with a car that probably shouldn’t have passed the 125 point inspection. Well this is where things got really interesting. At this point I receive a message – “CarMax Chris Wilmore (@CarMaxChris) is following you on Twitter.”
Clicking through to @CarMaxChris’s profile, Chris’ Bio reads “CarMax PR rep interested in sharing information about the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, car buying info, automotive content and social media trends.” Wow, so someone from CarMax “heard” me talking about them and reached out to me. So I take advantage of this access:
Me: @CarMaxChris Does CarMax allow inspection of vehicles by third party mechanics prior to purchase?
CarMaxChris: @DougWick Not prior to purchase, but all used CarMax cars can be returned for any reason within a 5-day period with our money-back guarantee
Well that seems reasonable, and plenty of time to get the car to a mechanic for our own third party inspection.
In the end, I got five great pieces of feedback from my network and a connection to the service I’m thinking about using who took the opportunity to address my concerns. I already like CarMax even though I haven’t set foot in one of their stores. This all transpired in the course of just about 3-4 hours.
This is a practical example of how an open publish:subscribe model for the world can become extremely powerful, and why it might be worth it to join Twitter.
Now think about if a mechanic in Austin had heard me mention “mechanic” and checked my location data to know that I live in Austin? They could have chimed in and potentially won some business. Or someone from my local CarMax to ask which car I’m looking at? Insurance providers? Financing? The DMV? They might all someday add value to this conversation because I raised my hand started talking about needing to buy a car. Good marketing – the kind I want to hear because of what my needs are right now.
The cardinal rule of Twitter is that you show your network some gratitude when they help you out:
Me: Thank you @atxkat @atxryan @doogsatx @dukethug @ScottIngram @baldman and of course @CarMaxChris for the CarMax feedback. Twitter FTW!
CarMaxChris: @DougWick You’re most welcome. Hope to see you in soon.
Atxkat: @Dougwick I would definitely recomend having a third party give it the once over… @drosko would agree
Now while I was going to go to CarMax anyway, and it was nice that he answered my question, there is a big opportunity for CarMaxChris to go above and beyond. He could track down @atxkat, @drosko, and @dukethug’s friend (it would just take a few minutes) and try to win them back as customers. That is where the real power of listening into the network, from a company perspective, is so powerful – and could change everything about how companies market in the future.
Facebook Connect: An Open Invitation to the Party
March 27, 2009
This post was originally published over on the Powered Blog, The Engaged Consumer.
Have you ever been so steeped in something that you see it everywhere you look? Standing in the middle of the Powered-sponsored Mashable party during South by Southwest Interactive, beer in hand and exploring the various rooms of the Six night club, I started to think about Facebook Connect. Yeah, this is how bad it’s gotten.
Facebook is a party. It’s a huge place where you can share content and news, play games together, engaging in many of the activities you do with friends in the offline world. The problem is that the party, up until now, has really just been for Facebook itself and its users. If you were any entity with commercial interests, the best you could do is give Facebook a banner to hang somewhere for you. This would be like if Powered sponsored the Mashable party but we could only hang a banner inside the bar. How effective would that be for our marketing, over the din of the music and rumble of conversation?
With Facebook Pages, now you can attend the party. You’re just like I was at Six, a sponsor floating around the crowd, having a few conversations and talking about Powered. This is much more effective marketing-wise than a few banners (at least I think so!), but still I’m just one guy and although there were a few other Powered employees our impact at the event was still limited. This was compounded by the reality that people didn’t always want to talk about Powered, a fact that is even truer in the personal-conversation world of Facebook – which is about as far away from an industry party as you can get.
Facebook Connect is really where things get interesting. It allows you, as a brand, to have your own room in the bar. By that I mean you can build your own communal experience and attach it in a meaningful way to the Facebook experience. People can walk into your room, find the people they already know, and message people outside the room about the cool things going on there.
Word-of-Mouth Traffic Flow
This doesn’t absolve brands from creating an engaging experience in their own community environment. You still need to populate your room with interesting content, people, and programming. But it really helps with one of the main problems branded communities have, which is getting people in the door. There is only so much you can do with email marketing, media promotion, and search. Here, Facebook runs the party, and you just hook into their flow. You are instantly rewarded for creating engagement, versus having to create engagement and then work hard to get the word out.
The Power of Context
The reasons why you would build your own room (Facebook Connect) versus just attend the party (Pages) are similar in both the online and offline world. With Connect, you gain context. Everything that happens in your community is in the world of your brand, versus the world of Facebook. Context is extremely powerful in the user’s mind, and it has a lot to do with building people’s brand affinity, advocacy, and loyalty. Does reading this blog entry on the Powered blog make you attribute the value to Powered, or to me (Wick, Doug Wick)? How would that change if you read it on my personal blog? If you walked into the Powered Room at the Mashable Party, how would this be different than just meeting someone from Powered?
Learning Ability
Also, with Connect comes data. Your ability to listen and learn as an organization is significantly enhanced when the technical handoff between Facebook servers and yours happens. What if the Mashable party went on indefinitely (I felt like it might at some points) and you never adapted your room to be more reflective of partier’s preferences or need – or even just freshened things up a bit? If you don’t have the data, you won’t have the visibility into individual behavior on a quantitative or qualitative level. You won’t learn or adapt as effectively, and you’ll start sounding like that boorish guy who’s always at the party saying the same things. Yes, we’ve heard that story about how you went bungee-jumping in Cancun eight times, thank you very much.
So now that you’ve been invited to the party, will you get in there? Or will you sit at home and let other brands have all the fun?
A solution looking for a problem
March 23, 2009
If you were living in the early 1900’s and someone handed you one of the first telephones, I’d bet you stare blankly at that person and say “now how would I use this?”
You’d be so used to communicating by letter, telegraph, or simply in person that you wouldn’t really know how to get any value out of a phone. That is, until you called someone. Then you might realize that there are tremendous opportunities for getting value out of a phone.
I often describe Twitter in the same way. Earlier I blogged about Why It Matters, and I still think bringing the publish:subscribe model to human communication systems will be revolutionary in its own right – whether that communication happens at twitter.com or on some other service.
But for now, people use Twitter in hundreds of different ways and everyone has constructed their own individual value proposition for using it. I use it to track my professional network and my local Austin network. It’s my virtual business card. I think it’s a great way to organize your deep network (the people you don’t know as well and don’t share as much with as your Facebook network).
I’d encourage you to pick up “the phone” and see how you can make Twitter valuable for you.
The secret to musical mastery: women
March 10, 2009
This post is to celebrate the lead-up to South by Southwest, one of the best music events on the planet.
Women are responsible for the vast majority of music ever created. Either they were creating it themselves, or they were inspiring young men to do the same.
Most women are shocked by this revelation. “You mean all men learn to play guitar in order to increase their chance of scoring?”
Yes.
“But they say it’s because it speaks to their soul.”
They’re lying.
There are two reasons why wooing the ladies is the main reason men gravitate toward musicianship. First, it works. I could go into why I think it works but it really doesn’t matter. The supporting data are overwhelming. Second, learning to play an instrument is difficult. After a few weeks, it seems like you’ll never get to any level of proficiency. Without the promise of a woman’s attention dangling out there, most men give up. Of course, the promise of a woman’s attention motivates a great deal of what we men do (working out, making money, etc.).
I’ve been a musician my whole life, and I do love music for reasons that have nothing to do with getting lucky. But those reasons came later, way after I started learning how to play. Even in 5th grade, where I changed from piano to saxophone, I did it to play an instrument that was “cooler.” This is really just a fifth-grader’s way of identifying a more girl-friendly strategy before he’s even figured out that he likes girls.
The problem is that most men fail to acknowledge the real reason why they should learn to play an instrument, even to themselves. As a result, they don’t optimize their approach to get the results they are after. This can lead to things like playing the oboe. No one ever got a date by playing the oboe. Sorry.
Men, it’s at this point that you need to look at yourselves in the mirror and be honest. Music is a wonderful, beautiful, artistic thing, but if you really want to become a good musician you need to focus on the possibility of one thing: groupies.
As in the earlier oboe-playing example, the point where most guys go astray is the point of instrument choice. If you choose a bad instrument, the ladies will ignore your efforts and you will quickly stop playing. You might even wonder why those harp lessons never stuck. But really, you were done before you started.
So to help you, I have included below a list of what I consider are the ten best instruments to woo the ladies – gathered from years of observing their effectiveness. You can play any of them, based on your personal taste and the type of women that interest you, but I wouldn’t stray too far from this list.
1. Guitar – A good guitar player is like superman, from the arena stage to the campfire. There is a reason why “Guitar Hero” is one of the most popular video games of all time.
2. Vocals – A man that can sing well can speak in ways the rest of us can’t. He also carries his instrument with him wherever he goes. The only reason he isn’t number 1 is because he doesn’t have the mystique of the guitar player (If you need to understand this dynamic better, see Cameron Crowe’s seminal movie Almost Famous).
3. Drums – The drummer is the working man of the rock band, the captain of the rhythm section. As such, even though he is further from the women in the front row than other musicians, the fact that he lays down the beats means his connection with them is more primal. Women will sometimes walk right past the lead guitarist and front man to talk to the drummer right after a show. Laying down the beat lays down the groundwork.
4. Bass Guitar / Stand-up Bass - In certain instances the man on bass can hop over the drummer, but in most cases bass guitar offers the least opportunity for expressiveness in terms of your traditional rock band instruments. But it’s still a powerful combination of rhythm and proximity to the audience. A Stand-Up Bass can earn you a little extra mojo if you work in a few full spins.
5. Piano / Keyboards – Piano is, in my opinion, the most legitimately romantic instrument behind vocals. This is why the hair bands of the 80’s, who were the least coy about their motivations for picking up instruments, would occasionally roll out a piano ballad to further their efforts (See “Something to Believe In”, Poison, 1990).
6. Saxophone – When I throw sax out there, most people think Kenny G. Stop it. This is not the sax I’m talking about. Sax is #6 for one reason, and that’s jazz. The jazz saxophone is the closest instrument to the human voice, and can nearly match its expressiveness. The weakness for the sax, as with other wind instruments, is that you cannot roll a combo with instrument+vocals. (For good sax, see Michael Brecker)
Before I go on, that’s an important note about instruments 1-5 above. Instruments like bass guitar or piano can shoot to the top of the list when paired with vocals. This is the only way a guy who looks like Billy Joel could marry Christie Brinkley (and he’s now married to 28-year-old Katie Lee – no judging, how you wield the power is your choice).
7. Trumpet – Ok, trumpet is a little bit of a stretch at #7 but I put it in not only because it’s another great jazz solo instrument, but also because it’s arguably the manliest instrument in the symphony orchestra (I know I’m reaching, but in the same room with men playing bassoon and viola, this guy is a rock star).
8. Violin / Fiddle – Violin is another cross-over instrument, because although it’s the prima donna of the symphony, it’s a great solo instrument for country/western/bluegrass/celtic. Unfortunately, fiddle-style violin just isn’t that sexy in most cases. But you can’t say Charlie Daniels didn’t considerably increase his luck every time he rolled out “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” (1979)
9. Trombone – Trombone brings it in at #9, as it too can be a powerful jazz or orchestral instrument. Though it’s a little pokier than its brass cousin the trumpet, it makes up for it a bit with deeper, manlier timbre.
10. Bagpipes – I personally think women get freaky when they hear the bagpipes. But I might be alone in this opinion. I mean, they play the bagpipes before Irish battles and at the funerals of policemen and firemen, for pete’s sake. This is a much better choice if you are looking for something non-traditional than say, the dreaded accordion.
So men, I hope my list will help you budding musicians out there in the early choices that can mean the difference between virtuosity and obscurity. And if you try them all and find that you have no musical talent whatsoever, remember that you can always grow a mustache.
Social Marketing, Music, Business, Culture, Tequila. I live in 
