What can We Learn from A String Quartet About Creativity, Innovation & Branding

Quartets playing classical music have been around for centuries. However, with the explosion of music genres and musicians (thanks to YouTube and Kickstarter), they have been finding it tough to remain relevant. The challenge that they face are:

• How to leverage their core strengths and still be relevant for their existing audience?
• How to attract new audience to come watch them play?
• And do both at the same time

If you look at it closely, this is the same questions that many mature brands are grappling with. How do they continue to remain relevant to their existing customers and at the same time attract a new market segment. Now, lets look at a performance by Salut Salon, a string quartet who have cracked this code.

If you look at their performance, there are a few things that stand out, which can be good learning for any brand, business struggling with the similar challenges:

• They continue to play to their strengths, which is playing classical music on the classical instruments.
• Add a dose of broadway. They have changed their presentation by mixing elements of broadway musicals – elements of surprise (the way they play their instruments), element of engagement (the way they interact with each other).
• Have fun along the way. One thing that i have realized in my role as an actor is that the best way to evoke an emotion in your audience is for the actor to actually feel the emotion themselves.

Some lessons that we can learn from the success of this quartet are as below:

• Be creative and break some rules. Look at how the quartet has broken all the rules about how to play an instrument in the performances. What rules can you break?
• Be Unique. Be You. They have created their own unique style of playing which has now created a niche for themselves, where they can rule.
• Understand your true strengths are and if they are aligned to what you want in the future.
• Play to your strengths.
• Understand your audience (current and the prospective). What is it that they both would love? Go after that sweet spot.
• Give your audience an experience to speak about. Good products/services that solve a problem is now table stakes. If you want to succeed, you have to concentrate and give an experience that your audience is willing to talk about.
• Have fun. Having fun not only increases your productivity, it also enhances your creativity.

What else did you learn from this quartet? Please share the same so that we can continue the discussion.