Personalisation pays
During the Festival there was a busker whose picture I now wish I’d taken. He had taken a position at the corner of South Bridge and the High Street, and this isn’t him.
Rather than belting out the usual medley of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed greatest hits, this guy was making up songs on the spot about the people walking by. Songs with pithy titles like “The Girl In The Red Jumper (Crossing The Road With A Gap Bag In Her Hand)”.
Unfortunately I can’t remember any lyrics. But I do remember that he was enjoying a lot of attention. Certainly from the girl in the red jumper. But also from everyone else in the vicinity, either because they were enjoying the voyeuristic experience of seeing how the girl in red responded to the attention, or because they were wondering whether they would be next. Either way this busker seemed to be doing better than most.
The episode reminded me of when a busking duo got onto a tube train at Hammersmith, heading for Heathrow.
Like our friend in Edinburgh these guys avoided the temptation to treat us to Now That’s What I call Busking 26.
Instead they performed a self-written protest song targeted at BAA, which bemoaned the difficulties faced by itinerant self-employed musicians when trying to make their ablutions in airport facilities. It was called “If You Can’t Have A Shave In A Toilet, Where Can You Have A Shave?”
By tailoring their content to their context and making it personal to the audience in the carriage, they too were doing rather better than your average busker.
In our game too, personalisation or the ability of users to personalise content themselves repeatedly delivers the goods when it comes to engagement. Witness our Coincidence campaign for Grolsch.