Why Michael Buble Should Send Flowers To Sara Bareilles
I’m a fan of piano pop.
You’d know what it is if you heard it. It’s taking the piano and bringing it to the foreground of a pop song so that it’s a primary instrument, almost always with a catchy, repeated hook. Elton John and Billy Joel are two good examples of artists that use the piano as their primary foreground instrument.
A young singer/songwriter named Sara Bareilles came out with a debut album of her original music in the summer of 2007. It was called “Little Voice”, and the lead track from that work, called “Love Song”, captivated the nation and the world. Her “Love Song” was featured as the theme music on a TV commercial promoting the Comcast cable company’s Rhapsody music service, and from that exposure, her single instantly shot up the charts in the fall of ’07. “Little Voice” was certified Gold (500,000 copies sold) shortly afterward, and her career has been shooting up ever since.
Enter Michael Buble.
Buble has also enjoyed stellar success recently, but in a very different way. The canadian-born crooner pays tribute to the old masters in much of his material, drawing on the big-band sound to recreate the styles of the velvety voices of artists like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. He puts new spins on familiar standards, and occasionally writes a new song or two just for good measure.
Have you heard his latest “new” song?
Listen to “Haven’t Met You Yet”, Buble’s latest original single, next to Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song”, and tell me you don’t notice an eerie similarity.
Bareilles created an ‘original’ sound, and made it popular. Buble took that sound and made it his — something he’s become a master at doing.
Oh, and by the way — there’s nothing wrong with this kind of flattery. Indeed, it’s what 800-Pound Gorillas do very well; read the marketplace, identify what works, and put their unique spin on their own product.
Now… let’s apply that to you.
The dominant players in your marketplace may have come out with something amazing recently. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take that idea and create something similar that fits the marketplace with your own unique fingerprint.
It’s what the Michael Bubles of the marketplace do all the time. Read what’s happening, find a way to adopt it without copying it altogether, and making it uniquely theirs.
Take a look at what’s going on in your market. Identify it, re-work it, and become your own 800-Pound Gorilla in that arena.
And for some help in getting you started, why not pick up The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales? It’s brand-new on Amazon this week, and has several ideas on how you can become the one everyone looks to as the dominant player. Check it out.
– Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company whose list of clients includes the ticket sales departments of professional sports teams in the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer. He is the author of the Gold Medal-award-winning book Reality Sells, and his brand-new second book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales: How To Dominate Your Market, is now available from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.
Buble is awesome but not very original, hes good at doing other peoples songs. I wish he would do more original music like Elton. Nice observation, Ive never heard of Sara B. What im hearing you say is that its important to scan the environment to see whats effective and mirror it.
Thanks for the insightful article!I agree with Sheila, I loved Elton John and wish Buble would be more like him! Don’t get me wrong, Buble is a wonderful musician, but if he were to send flowers to everyone that he “borrowed” his music from, he would be looking at hundreds of bouquets.