The Bagpipe Society

Why join The Bagpipe Society? A point of view.

At the AGM the question of discounts for attending the Blowout for members of the society was raised. The premise being that a discount is a reason for joining the society.

I don’t really buy this argument as it seems a rather feeble reason for joining. Extrinsic rewards only work while the reward is present (remove the discount, the behaviour goes away), whereas you really want people to join for intrinsically motivated reasons, because then they’ll stick around and likely contribute to the society. If you have a good enough society and correctly articulate the reasons for joining you shouldn’t need discounts to persuade people to join. However I didn’t raise any objection because that then leads into a rather larger discussion about how to market the Bagpipe Society properly. Something which was not part of the agenda of the AGM, 2017.

As I was listening to the discussion it occurred to me that most likely no one in the room has heard of the concept of “the job to be done”, so I thought introducing that concept may be useful to the society.

Over the last 20 years Clayton Christensen (of Harvard University) has been refining his theory of disruptive innovation. Out of this work has come a new concept of the job to be done. Simply put: rather than try to work backwards from what you have got (a product, a society...) to the customer you start with the job your product, business, society is doing for your customer (or society member). For example, no one buys a drill, they buy 1/4" holes, the drill just facilitates the creation of the holes. Knowing this changes your perspective on the problem(s) being solved by people that purchase drills. This change in perspective then changes how you market your drills and how you educate your customers. If you then ask your customers why they are drilling holes you’ll find many reasons and contexts. You may choose to provide a whole sequence of educational videos on safety, and for working with many different types of material that you may wish to drill. Or some articles on how to correctly choose the right type of drill or drill bit for a specific task. In another study they found that milkshakes (the thick ones you might get from McDonalds) are bought by commuters to alleviate boredom, and provide something to keep them full until lunchtime. The milkshakes were competing with bananas, doughnuts, bagels and various other products. The milkshake won because you could keep your hands clean and consume with one hand while driving a car.

I think if we take the same approach with the Bagpipe Society - what jobs do the members of the Bagpipe Society hire the Bagpipe Society to do? What are the alternatives to the Bagpipe Society (they may not be other societies!). If these questions pose many answers those can then be used to better position the Bagpipe Society’s marketing and activities (Blowout, International Bagpipe Day, etc).

What do I hire the bagpipe society for?

Inspiration. I typically play more after a recent Blowout than before it. That’s quite a big effect
Meeting other pipers
Listening to the various types of instrument and the different playing styles people have. Blowout, Facebook.
Sources of music. Mainly at the Blowout, but sometimes in Chanter, Facebook.
Finding out about events
Dance (Blowout)
Getting away from the rest of the world for a few days (Blowout)
Tuition on the occasions my nerves don’t get the better of me

Compiling the above list I note that I’ve mentioned Blowout quite a bit. If we did a survey of all society members you could find themes like that. That’s where you find the important jobs or events that satisfy the jobs to be done. My list above is almost certainly incomplete, but it should give you an idea.

If we go a step further and ask “Why does a person play bagpipes?” (what job is the bagpipe doing) we get another set of reasons. In my case I’ve had to abandon most of the other instruments I used to play because of the RSI I got in the early 1990s. Guitar and mandolin both cause me problems which I can’t live with. Bagpipes were a happy accident. Greg Samways let me try his pipes and I succeeded at getting a scale out of them on the first attempt, which surprised us both. Not long after that I heard a Gaita and that was it, I was hooked. And fortunately for me, pipes don’t cause me much problems with RSI compared to other instruments. I have a musical outlet (that’s the job that’s being done), just not one that I ever expected.

I hope you found this small diversion into marketing land interesting. I’m software engineer that’s had to learn marketing. I’m not an expert on marketing, just someone that finds it interesting.