Despite your best efforts to imitate the “Single Ladies” dance at that one wedding, chances are you, as a hard-working entrepreneur, don’t have too much in common with pop icon Beyonc?. But even if you’re far less glamorous and less musically gifted than the singing sensation, she still has plenty to teach you about capturing an audience’s attention, according to a new book.
In an excerpt from his recently released book Captivology?featured in USA Today, author Ben Parr lays out Beyonc?’s impressive achievements when it comes to winning fans and selling albums.
Her fifth album, he reminds readers, received absolutely no marketing and was announced without fanfare via a midnight Instagram post. Within three hours, it “sold 80,000 copies. In one day, it sold 430,000 copies. By day three, it had broken iTunes records with an astounding 828,733 digital copies sold,” Parr explains.
Overnight successes aren’t
All of which is a phenomenal achievement for an artist, but what does this have to do with the type of business person who is not known to go to work in miniscule sequined dresses? Plenty, says Parr. The essential lesson of Beyonc?’s “overnight” success is that what appears to be instant achievement almost never is.
“The media loves to talk about overnight successes. Pinterest, Angry Birds, and Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ all seemed to come out of nowhere to become billion-dollar companies and international superstars. But what if I told you Pinterest was founded in 2008, three years before it became an ‘overnight sensation’? Did you know Angry Birds was the 52nd game released by game studio Rovio? And did you know that Psy had been topping the charts in South Korea for nearly a decade before his horse dancing swept the globe?” Parr writes. “The truth is that most ‘viral’ moments are years in the making.”
And what’s true of Psy and Pinterest is true of Beyonc? too. “She has carefully developed her craft, image, and reputation to create long-term interest in everything she does,” Parr says.
Read more at INC.
