Shine on you Michael Jackson

I can never truly claim that I liked Michael Jackson’s music. But as an entertainer, there are a few who could match him.

But there is another dimension of MJ that I admire – that of a marketer and brand builder. Having started his singing career at an early age of four, he used all the media opportunities that he got (including the Ed Sullivan Show), to the hilt in building brand MJ. When the ‘Jackson Brother’ tag started to limit his musical style and repertoire, he went solo. His own extraordinary success and the less than average performance of the other siblings just go to prove how right he was to break the association.

The reported £ 7 million he charged Pepsi in 1984 for a series of commercials endorsing Pepsi, and the freak fire accident during the shoot, did much more to boost Pepsi’s sales than any other brand endorser could possibly achieve.

I personally feel he was a much better dancer than a singer (apologies to the fans of MJ’s music) and he used this to further brand MJ. He kept up with the times and his style of entertainment found a ready audience amongst the new MTV generation. The emergence of new media was a huge opportunity that Michael Jackson did not miss.

High visibility, global audience, unique characteristics (the ‘moon walk’ his wardrobe, unique hair style), awe (Neverland) are all classic brand building strategies that marketers world wide adopt and often struggle to implement. Michael Jackson seems to have mastered the art real early and what apparently looked to us, with absolute ease.

Brand MJ has had its share of bumps on the road. But the brand never got derailed. It came out almost unscathed all the time. The power of brand MJ was so strong that the industry believed that the concert in London, would not only wipe of Michael’s debt of $500 million, but it would kick start his career once again (beginning another S-curve?).

The person is dead. But brand MJ lives on. Already books are surfacing on the internet chronicling his life and incidents that led to his ultimate end. Be sure that brand MJ is not dead and will be around for a long long time in the future.