There is an incredible marketing lesson in this Sammy Kershaw vs. the CMA debacle: never give the full story.
Conversion and attention are driven by providing an incomplete picture that your audience can complete on its own because a show is never about the performers.
None of us really knows what happened. We don’t know exactly how the CMA decides who can and cannot walk on the red carpet. We don’t know the details of Sammy Kershaw’s request.
That’s why this story works so well as a unit of conversation in country music.
It is a canvas with about 25% of the painting complete. With only a few fragments of the picture visible, our minds can project the rest of the image onto the frame in any way that we want.
I’ve seen people argue that the country music establishment cares more about promoting the future of country music than about respecting its past. I’ve heard people argue that many have had hits in country music, and if you were to invite them all, it would make for a very logistically difficult show. I’ve even seen people make this about race.
The truth is probably something much simpler and more human than we all want it to be. My guess, and I have absolutely zero inside information (I cannot stress how important that is), is that planning the CMA red carpet list is like planning a wedding.
Of course, you want to invite every single person that matters to you. But guess what? You can’t because your wedding is about your mom, your dad, your spouse’s mom, your spouse’s dad, your siblings, your grandparents, your cousins, your friends. It’s not really about you, and there are competing and overlapping interests, and a lot of crazy people you end up inviting purely for political reasons, all outside your control.
But when it comes down to it, you have to draw the line somewhere. You cannot invite every single person you’ve ever met to your wedding.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t have the facts, but just enough of the story is visible to let me project experiences from planning a wedding onto its canvas.
Country music fans are passionate, spread out, and protective of the genre. This is the perfect story because it allows every person with every opinion and every kind of relationship to country music to engage.
Music marketers pay attention. It’s always less about what you say and more about what you don’t say.
