Lessons Learned From The Beatles' Success

February 22, 2011

Interview with Harry Beckwith, author of the book Unthinking

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Mike Carruthers:
Back in the '60s the Beatles exploded like nothing we’d ever seen before -and now some interesting new research helps to explain why.

Harry Beckwith:
Well, they did a very good job of making the audience feel that they were singing to them.  That was a big part of it.  They don't sing about Peggy Sue but they sing to you, and they say, "I want to hold your hand."
 

Harry Beckwith, author of the book Unthinking, says sure the Beatles sure did sing songs like “Michele” and “Hey Jude”…

Those came later though, if you listen to the lyrics of the first album “Meet the Beatles” within the first 2 stanzas they use the word “you” in almost every single song on the album. Once they had established themselves the Beatles could sing anything that they wanted – and you can’t sing about “you” over and over again.

And that technique is very powerful.

You see this technique used in advertising and marketing all the time. We have a great interest in ourselves.Dale Carnegie said in How to Win Friends and Influence People, "The most beautiful word in the English language to any person is their own name.  Use it often.”Advertising typically says, “Do you want this, do you want that?” as if it’s speaking to you, and the Beatles followed the same technique. That was an explicit strategy on Brian Epstein’s  part because he was worried that Dick Clark was right.

Worried that Dick Clark was right about what?

Dick Clark, supposedly the expert on American pop music at that time said that they would never succeed – “British acts just didn’t play well here”.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here