Learn Strategy from David Bowie

In uncertain times would you rather be Justin Bieber or David Bowie?

Let's start with, what is the Justin Bieber strategy?

Targeting the mainstream by creating a product that appeals to the largest number of people now and repeating it as consistently as possible. This can be a great strategy, so long as the tastes of your audience don’t change.

What, then, is the David Bowie strategy?

Creating work that explores a niche that interests him, pushing it to a personal limit, and then moving to a new niche and reinventing himself. The potential audience for a particular version of David Bowie is smaller than the one for Justin Bieber at his peak but over time, as public tastes change, the audience for all versions of Bowie will grow… and sustain.

The Bowie strategy has a number of advantages. When your work reaches a smaller more specific group of people, they tend to connect more deeply with the work and become more loyal fans. Someone who becomes a fan of a version of Bowie will likely stay a fan for much longer than the fickle followers of more mainstream acts.

Bowie’s fans cover a wider range of people, people who have varied interest and participate in very different social groups. This means there is a greater chance that a new person could be introduced to Bowie. Then, if they look into his collection of work, it is more likely they will find something that appeals to them. The time that would turn a Justin Bieber into an irrelevancy or a joke only makes David Bowie MORE relevant.

So how can you take advantage of the David Bowie strategy?

1. Let your work explore what interests you, rather than chasing what’s popular now.
2. Don’t get stuck as a rerun. You don’t have to talk about what used to interest you or be who you used to be.
3. Find a way to keep the benefits of those past versions of you available. This is easiest when you create things, records or artifacts of your journey.

Never be ashamed of who you were but learn to get the most out of becoming someone new.