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Lesson #4: Put Yourself in Your Consumers’ Shoes

Article Overview: In the mid-1990s, Fuller came across a group of five women who called themselves Spice. They had been singing together and trying to get noticed for more than 18 months, to no success. When Fuller approached them, they were not sure what to expect, but anything had to be better than how they had spent the last 18 months.

Lesson #4: Put Yourself in Your Consumers’ Shoes

In the mid-1990s, Fuller came across a group of five women who called themselves Spice. They had been singing together and trying to get noticed for more than 18 months, to no success. When Fuller approached them, they were not sure what to expect, but anything had to be better than how they had spent the last 18 months.

Fuller looked at Emma, Geri, Mel B, Mel C, and Victoria and saw something that others before him had missed. “I thought, s***, I know there’s something here,” he recalls. “I know I can get them good songwriters and good songs.” With that, he changed their name to Spice Girls and signed a contract to be their manager and to take them global. The five girls were still doubtful, but agreed, having nothing to lose.

Fuller was confident that the girls had potential, or at least that he could give them enough good song material to create that potential. But, there was still one big problem that he had to face.
Fuller faced a marketing conundrum. History showed that young girls would traditionally buy music by male singers instead of female singers. After all, female artists were found to be threatening and young girls were afraid of losing their boyfriends. Fuller, on the other hand, wanted to create a girl band that was different, that young girl consumers would be clamoring just as hard to buy as their boyfriends.

After thinking about the problem for awhile, Fuller came up with an idea. He had to create a girl group that was non-threatening. That meant creating a group that young girls could identify with. And that was where he came up with the idea of “girl power”. Spice Girls’ songs such as Wannabe summed it up: “If you want to be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.”

Sure, it was nothing more than a clever marketing ploy on Fuller’s part. But the slogan actually came to represent something significant to young girls, who began to look up to the five Spice Girls. They were no longer just a pop band; thanks to Fuller, they had become role-models.
Fuller had successfully solved the marketing conundrum, but he was not finished yet. He envisioned giving them their own TV series, which would give them a global audience. But after weighing the risks, Fuller decided it would be too chancy. A TV series would require spending a year in Hollywood, after which time the show could still get cut. On top of that, it was trusting the attention spans of young viewers to last a whole year.

Instead, Fuller decided to opt for a quick movie. He had his brother write the screenplay for Spiceworld. It was yet another clever tactic to appeal to the young generation of consumers – a quick two hours to get them hooked on the Spice Girls, instead of a long-drawn out series that might test their limits.

It was by continually putting himself in his target audiences’ shoes that Fuller was able to make the right judgment calls when it came to his marketing strategies.

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Article Tags: b mel, band thanks, boyfriends, conundrum, female artists, female singers, five women, girl band, girl group, girl power, good songs, male singers, mel c, mid 1990s, ploy, pop band, song material, spice girls, spice girls songs, young girls



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