So I'm at a birthday party last Thursday. Quite a posh party too; free-flowing open bar, grilled scallops and lamp chops just some of the gourmet hors d'oeuvres, and a live band to keep us all company.
The band was somewhat offbeat--three horn players, drums, bass guitar and a sultry German-accented singer (that's them above). But more than the line-up, what really made the band different was its opening statement:
"We're play only original music...our compositions of acid jazz. We hope to see you on the dance floor."
Original music?
Acid jazz?
Get up and dance to it?
"Fat chance," I thought, surveying the crowd, made up of a well-heeled group of boomers. This is a group tailor-made for a cover band playing moldy oldies from the '70s and '80s...backed up by a DJ playing more of the same in between band sets.
But much to my surprise, the dance floor was jammed from the get-go...and stayed that way until the we-gotta-get-going.
Now there wasn't one familiar song played all night; as they said, these were original compositions, and unless you were one of the band or one of their family members, chances are that every tune was as foreign as a Turkish homily.
But what was familiar was the rhythm and the musical phrasing. As they used to say on the old American Bandstand show: "Well, it's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to."
And it was while shaking my ass to the music that I learned this week's lesson (with apologies to Mary Poppins):
A spoonful of familiarity
helps the innovation
go down.
While most people publicly proclaim their love for the new, the innovative and the untried, when it comes down to actually taking the plunge or making the purchase, they usually choose tried-and-true over the great unknown.
Which is why great marketers know to mix in a bit of the old to sell the new.
Which is why just about every Hollywood pitch is an equation of two olds equaling one new. ("It's a cross between American Idol and a cantorial concert"...or something equally as unlikely.)
Which is why even the most radical of new concepts, let's say the Kindle or iPad, incorporate old-school stepping stones to ease adoption and interaction (Kindle's ads still proclaim "Reads like real paper.")
Which is why, I suspect, chicken exists...if only as a comparative barmometer for alligator meat, turtle meat, fried tofu and countless other edibles best described to newbies as "tastes like chicken."
And which is why instead of being a bunch of drunken, overstuffed wallflowers, the guests at Thursday's party worked off their calories on the dance floor dancing to the somewhat familiar original sounds of Atomics. (You can check them out here; ironically, their site says "Sounds like: Saint Germain (Ludovic Navarre), Jamiroquai, Thievery Corporation, PLEJ.")
And by the way...don't you think this post reads just like Seth Godin?