Nashville Stars Want to Know You Better

What song did you like better on Gene Watson’s latest album--”She’s Leavin’ Looking Good” or “You Can’t Take it With You When You Go?”

What influenced you most to buy Hank Williams Jr.’s new record--reading a newspaper story or seeing a video or hearing the song on the radio?

And as long as we’re asking--what’s the last car you bought? And where do you eat fast food? And what kind of jeans are you wearing?

Right about now a lot of music fans are probably ready to pop another question: Hey, bud, who wants to know?

Hank Williams Jr. does. And Kenny Rogers. And Travis Tritt, Gene Watson and Take 6. They’re just some of the country and pop artists at the Nashville wing of Warner Bros. Records who are taking part in an ambitious record industry direct-marketing experiment. For the last six months, Warners/Nashville has been inserting research cards into most of its new releases, each filled with an array of detailed questions about fans’ consumer habits.

To help encourage fan response, Warners includes a signed request from its artists, which goes in part: “Because your opinion is important to me . . . please take a moment to answer these questions and drop this card in the mail.”

“In any business, you need a good business plan and in our business, a big part of your plans involve marketing,” says Eddie Reeves, general manager of Warners/Nashville. “We have a limited amount of money to spend, so this is a way for us to get a better understanding of our marketplace. That’s the whole point of research--to help us figure out the smartest way to spend our money.”

Pop purists worry that these market research surveys could encourage record companies to meddle in artists’ creative decisions. And in fact Reeves acknowledges that three top members of the Warners/Nashville roster--Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris and Randy Travis--refused to participate in the research surveys. “Dwight felt it was a little bit of a betrayal of the consumer’s trust,” says his manager, Gary Borman. “Albums are meant for artistic expression, not as a medium for a marketing study. Dwight just didn’t feel the two mixed.”

Reeves was tight-lipped about the project’s scope, refusing to divulge how many records had been distributed with research cards--or what percentage of cards had been filled out and returned.

But like it or not, market research, long a key ingredient in the film and TV industry, is finally coming of age in the record industry. “I’m surprised other record labels aren’t doing it,” says Larry Solters, a former MCA Records exec who is now head of Scoop Marketing. “I can’t tell you how many meetings we had at MCA with these big corporate sponsors, whose marketing guys would ask who was buying our artists’ records. And everyone would just shrug and mumble something about (Top 40) radio.

“They’d look at us as if we were from another planet. In their business, they could tell you who buys Pepsi, what kind of house they live in and what color toilet paper they use. In the record industry, people say, ‘Let’s get the record on (Top 40) radio and see what happens.’ ”

That attitude is beginning to change. One of the industry’s leading marketing firms, Sound Data, provides most record labels--and product manufacturers--with results from a syndicated research panel of 2,200 frequent record buyers, who keep a monthly diary of purchases and respond to quarterly telephone surveys. Another firm, SRO Marketing, has provided labels with pre-release research on new albums by sending out advance cassettes, with questionnaires, to a nationwide selection of record stores.

“In the past, record companies have shied away from research because they’ve looked at it as being too cold and analytical,” says Leanne Meyers, president of Image Consultants, which has helped construct marketing strategies for Janet Jackson, R.E.M and Joni Mitchell. “But they’re starting to come around.”

Warners’ Nashville chief says he’s solicited advice from his corporate cousins in Time Warner’s research department, who helped provide a focus--and formulated specific questions--for his CD-enclosed research cards. “I can’t imagine how it’s going to cheapen a performer by being involved in this,” Reeves says. “We’re not going to start telling our artists what their artistry should be.

“But there’s nothing wrong with finding out which particular songs their fans liked--or what products they buy. We simply want to help our artists reach a wider audience and be more creative about selling our records.”