Part III of III: The Successful Re-Branding Of Johnny Cash

In parts I and II marketer Michael C. Wagner took a look at producer Rick Rubin’s re-branding of Johnny Cash which left the legend both more popular and hipper than he’d been in two decades. Today Wagner shares his love of the singer with his own son via Cash’s heartfelt cover of a Nine Inch Nails tune and urges us all take charge of our own brands:

Two nights ago I was riding in the car with my 19 year-old son. It
was my car, so my music playing. Sometimes it’s good to own the pink
slip!

Johnny Cash was singing “Hurt”. My son, confident he was going to impress me with an unknown fact, asked, “Do you know that’s a Nine Inch Nails song?”

Probably
to his disappointment, I acknowledged I did know and followed up with
my own question,
“What do you think of Johnny’s version?”

He said, “It’s great – he owns it.”

Nothing more was said. We just rode and listened to one of the greatest cover versions in music history.

As it turns out, Nine Inch Nails founder, Trent Reznor, the song’s author, agrees with my son. In an interview with Alternative Press, Trent shares his response the first time he watched the music video of Cash’s version:

“I
pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I
just ‘lost my girlfriend’, because that song isn’t mine anymore. … It
really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art
form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying
sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and
alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a
radically different era/genre and it still retains sincerity and
meaning—different, but every bit as pure.”

This is what I
mean when I challenge people to release their creative spirit in their
company, organization, or career: Their brand.

Most everything
is a “cover” of one kind or another. You’re not the first to own a
coffee shop, run a dry cleaning store, or lead a local charity – but
you can do it with your unique creative vision! Put your fingerprint on
it and make it unmistakably yours. Run your business, organize your
department, own “your song”.

How long has it been since you had a hit?

Michael C.Wagner blogs about marketing @ Own Your Brand.