What is the customer looking for when listening to music or going to a show? What needs does he seek to cater for by consuming this type of experience? Perhaps the answer lies in the very job of the person on the stage - the artist: the consumer looks for art. This means that in this market, the customer wants not only the music, theatre or fashion products marketed in isolation but also an experience that art can more broadly provide (FISCHER, 1987).

In this perspective, artists, like companies, seek to add value to their products and services in terms of customer perceived benefits, which are not only functional but also emotional (KOTLER and KELLER, 2012). Like Cirque de Soleil, which increased numbers of choreography and musical theatre to the feeling of nostalgia brought by the circus canvas, singers add visual style, cinematography, media content, among other "products" linked to their brand.

The shift in perspective from the product of an artistic nature to the experience of art may explain Gaga's sudden and explosive success. Martin Kupp, associate professor at the European School of Management and Technology and author of "The Fine Art of Success - Knowing Great Artistic Works for Creating Great Business," conducted a case study on Gaga's career in 2011, highlighting the multifaceted public personality of the singer: "Lady Gaga transcends the boundaries of the sectors, and it is not really clear if she is a musician, an artist or a stylist," said Kupp (ANDERSON; RECKHENRICH; KUPP, 2011;

In an interview for MTV, in September 2008, the singer already revealed the desire to unite music, fashion and theatricality in her artistic performance, which she has been exploring since her first album, The Fame. For Gaga, contemporary pop culture lacked the combination of music with visual aspects that generated a more complete artistic experience, capable of fascinating the consumer. In other words, the artist needed to re-conquer true fans:

With my music, it's a party, it's a lifestyle and it's about making the lifestyle the forefront of music [...]. When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything completely - performance art, pop art, fashion. For me, it's all about bringing everything together and being a real story that will bring back the super fan. I want to bring this back. I want the image to be so strong that fans will want to eat and sip and lick every part of us. Lady Gaga (HARRIS, 2008, p. 1).

Some say that Gaga's artistic product was built not so much from originality but rather from the simple combination of dance floor compositions and old references from the pop world remodelled by the singer, starting with the surname Gaga (which came from Radio Ga Ga, a song of the band Queen). But it is difficult to measure how much an artist offers something genuinely avant-garde. The fact is that Gaga's "music-art", original or copy, provided her with an advantage that put her above what other competing singers did at the time (ANDERSON; RECKHENRICH; KUPP, 2011).

Products and brands are like organisms: they go through different stages, through growth, certain declines, until they reach some stability when they are already mature; sometimes they perish until they die, but companies use different strategies to stay competitive, and thus, to eternalise (KOTLER, KELLER, 2012). It is not easy to determine the current stage of a product, but the product life cycle concept is useful for analysing the likely course of the product (or category, brand) over the time it is in the market (CHURCHILL , 2000).

In fast-moving markets, there is not always time to enjoy the ascension phase. Recall, for example, the case of the Canadian manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM): in the same year that the mobile phone giant, owner of Blackberry phones, via its actions reached the mark of $140 (this in 2007), Apple launched its first iPhone model, with a touch screen. Five years later, RIM's share of smartphones had fallen from 50% to less than 1% (WHARTON, 2015). As in organisms, it seems that artists and companies acquire diseases that hinder their development or suddenly shorten the phases of greater vigor.

In Gaga's case, the top of the career seems to have been reached between the years of 2012 and 2013. After the success of The Fame and The Fame Monster (an extended play of the first album), Gaga was successful in the album Born This Way, it's the second studio album to reach the top-selling second CD in the world in 2011 (second only to Adele's "21"). Still investing in dance floor music, Born This Way spawned Gaga's most lucrative tour to this day, yielding approximately $227 million.

From there, one has to question how far the singer's work has remained in dialogue with her audience. Gaga seemed more and more immersed in her music-art concept: she did model work, partnerships with plastic artists and even presented herself at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (ZAMBELO, 2013), experiences that served as inspiration for the artistic proposal of her third album, ArtPop. The large mass of young pop music consumers, however, still listened to generic compositions such as 2012's big hit, "Gangnam Style," by the South Korean "Psy". In addition, when Gaga released the predominantly electro-pop sound of ArtPop in 2013, the most played song that year was another hit: Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines was a pop made up of the mixture of African American rhythms like R&B.

ArtPop was technically debated, criticised and even endorsed by some journalists (such as Forbes's Nick Messitte, who considered the album reviews incoherent), but in the current mass-music scene, "less is more", the opposite to the path chosen by Gaga. It seems that her clients wanted art, but nothing sophisticated like Botticelli (Gaga used fragments of the work The Birth of Venus on the ArtPop cover). In addition, the singer had worked for more than two years on the project, enough time in a market like music, new trends and idioms to emerge, quickly making what was new old fashioned (ZAMBELO, 2013). The result: ArtPop sold just over 2 million copies, far below the more than 12 million copies sold by The Fame, and was unable to chart its singles at the top of American radio stations.

This difference in expectation between supply and demand resembles the RIM case again. In 2007, the company sought to offer, on a small screen of cellular, all the functionalities of a computer. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs was focusing on an innovative but at the same time simple model - the iPhone, with just two physical buttons and combined features of iPod, phone and internet browser (WHARTON, 2015). To some extent, Lady Gaga's career between The Fame and ArtPop recalls the rise and fall of RIM's BlackBerry: the more sophisticated, the better it seemed to get until it reached a point in its lifecycle where its higher quality simply became obsolete (BULOW, 1986).

The challenge of swiftly adapting to the market seems greater in businesses dealing with long-running projects such as IT companies and much of the artistic production that can not be changed at any time. Many singers perceive changes in the market in the midst of a new project and seek to adapt it by changing compositions or recruiting new producers, which usually results in fragmented work and no personality.

This seems to have been the great misconception of the BlackBerry Storm cell phone project, launched a year after the iPhone, a fatal mistake that RIM made in attempting, unthinkingly, to incorporate trends already launched by Apple in the smartphone market (MCNISH, SILCOFF, 2015). In Lady Gaga's case, the disaster was smaller because the output was simpler: to shorten the life of ArtPop and to leave for new projects.

When a company is in a crisis of image, often generated by successively mistaken steps, it is crucial to have a strong brand and a solid base of customers who retain at least part of their business, giving them time to review their strategies and reposition itself on the market (KOTLER and KELLER, 2012).

Schultz (2001) emphasises the importance of brand as perceived value by the customer when he states that "brand promise or value proposition is not a slogan, an icon, a color or a graphic element, although all these aspects can contribute. On the contrary, it is the heart and soul of the brand "(Schultz, 2001, p.8). The brand is something that remains fixed in the consumer's mind, constituting a set of attributes such as personality, values, associations, and quality, that influence the purchase process (CRESCITELLI; FIGUEIREDO, 2009).

The personality of the brand contributes to differentiate it in the market. The stronger this identity, the greater will be the preference for it to add sincerity, emotion, competence, sophistication, and robustness. Gill and Dawra, 2010, Kotler and Keller 2012, 274 will say that "the brand needs to be carefully managed so that its value does not suffer depreciation.”

Being "branding" has always been a strong point of Lady Gaga (BARBOSA, 2017). The proof is that despite ArtPop's poor performance, Gaga remained relevant. Her shows became visually unique, making the "ARTPOP Ball Tour" an estimated $ 83 million (well below the Born This Way tour, but still a respectable number). Also exploring what is known as "mass intimacy", Gaga developed with her fans a relationship of affective ties constantly nourished by social networks; nicknaming them "little monsters," while calling herself the "Mother Monster" (HSM, 2016).

After ArtPop, Gaga and her business owners seemed to be aware that something should be done to keep customers in the music business buying the singer's brand. As a product whose obsolescence is programmed (BULOW, 1986), Gaga's electro-pop sound should be replaced by something new, which for the singer meant leaning on what was perhaps her greatest competence: her voice. Thus, in a skillful strategic move, Gaga joined the celebrated jazz singer Tony Bennet and released, just over ten months after ArtPop, the collaborative jazz album Cheek to Cheek.

Betting on already established compositions and in partnership with great artists of the genre, Gaga and Bennett sought to introduce standard jazz to a younger audience in a production of universal appeal (REICH, 2014). It made sense: there was a big gap in the genre left by the popular British singer Amy Winehouse, who passed away in 2011 as a young woman and with a career of great success.

Although its release did not take place until the end of 2014, Cheek to Cheek was already in Gaga's plans since 2012 and was only delayed due to the singer's health problems during the ArtPop tour. The delay seems to have been providential, as the new project came at a time when Gaga needed to quickly regain recognition from the music industry and the public about her talent and prominence. Cheek to Cheek reached the top spot on the Billboard chart, was awarded a Grammy and won a tour that grossed $ 15.3 million, a high number for the genre. It also garnered critical acclaim from critics, especially on Lady Gaga's vocals on the album.

The effect of Cheek to Cheek went beyond that: it brought versatility to Gaga's career and added value to her portfolio, a good strategy for companies seeking to diversify their performance. As Doorasamy (2015) points out, good portfolio management has the power to generate competitive advantage; creating, evaluating, developing and pursuing the development of new products allows companies to change strategic direction, avoiding stagnation and improving their market competitiveness (DOORASAMY, 2015; PORTER, 1985).

By attacking a new market to reposition its brand, the move made by Gaga also underscores the limitations of the PLC concept. As Kotler and Keller (2012) elucidate, the strategies implemented by the organisations make the stages of life of the products and brands change and gain new contours in the face of the market and, above all, of competition (KOTLER; KELLER, 2012).

Another lesson that can be learned from the Cheek to Cheek episode in Gaga's career is that to stay competitive, it is sometimes necessary to join forces. The music industry, like other market sectors, imposes entry barriers for artists who wish to migrate from a genre (PORTER, 1986). It would not be different with Gaga and her pretence of singing jazz, which has a completely different audience of commercial pop music. So the collaboration with Tony Bennett, who at the time was a well-established jazz singer with more than fifty years of career was essential for Lady Gaga to succeed.

Likewise, Fiat, a national champion who for decades took pride in its Italian heritage, merged with Chrysler in 2014, combining features with the almost century-old American manufacturer. Without this union, it would be difficult for the automaker to compete with the major automotive conglomerates that have emerged from global mergers in recent years (EBHARDT, LEPIDO, 2014).

Also, the iPhone would not have become Apple's most successful product had it not been for the partnership with America's largest phone operator AT&T in the development of the project (ELGAN, 2007; COHAN, 2013).

Partnerships such as that of Gaga and Bennett arise not only as answers to the needs of the market but also in the pretension of teaching the market to consume a new product or to revise the perception of the brand. Just as Apple led smartphone users to let go of buttons by offering touch screen technology, to some extent, Lady Gaga taught her audience to consume jazz, while much of the jazz audience learned to listen to Gaga (PADRÃO; RIBEIRO, 2017).

The position of the brand in the market depends on the organisation's ability to identify the signals issued by its audience, but also to exploit its competencies to teach the customer how to satisfy their needs, even if they do not know them yet (KOTLER, KELLER, 2012).

When Lady Gaga emerged in the music industry, the mix of different art concepts under the packaging of pop culture caught the attention: it was an eccentric but at the same time commercial singer. However, her voice seemed dazzled by the high electronic beats of her songs.

Cheek to Cheek revealed to the world a new Lady Gaga, more sophisticated and elegant, although her characteristic extravaganza remained in the use of wigs, loaded makeup and exuberant clothes in her shows. At the album's launch, it was followed by a performance at the Oscars and innumerable appearances that evidenced her vocal qualities, such as when she sang the American national anthem at the opening of the Super Bowl in early 2016; and a week later, paying tribute to David Bowie at the Grammy Awards.

The changes in Lady Gaga were many: putting her voice in the foreground; adapting her costumes to the most palpable fashion trends; eliminating religious references that provoked protests; creating a performance style of stage more easily appreciated by the general public. Apparently, the result of these and other adaptations seems to have been positive in allowing the singer to access new markets, explore different musical genres and establish herself as an industry-respected singer (Carter, 2018, DOLAN, 2014, PARTRIDGE, 2014).

All this converges to Joanne, the last studio album released by the singer in 2016. Joanne was Lady Gaga's aunt, who passed away still young and who gave her the second name of baptism (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is the singer's full name), serving, therefore, like a hook so that Gaga explored her family inheritance in the new album. The musical style is dance-pop, but with influences of soft rock, country and folk, a more classic and emotionally introspective material than all of her previous albums.

Joanne debuted at number one on the Billboard charts (setting a record for the same singer), received two nominations at the Grammy Awards and a tour that, even early interrupted by her new health problems, raised $ 94.9 million (SARMENTO, 2016).

It is interesting to analyse the promotion strategy adopted by Gaga for Joanne: before the concerts in great arenas, Gaga created a promotional tour called Dive Bar Tour, a small digression of presentations in American bars transmitted live by the official page of the singer. According to Gaga, the mini-tour aimed to reinforce the "back to roots" aspect of the album and accentuate its American atmosphere. In addition to the musical genre change, Gaga decided to add patriotism to her new work (ROLLING STONE, 2016).

The strategy could not be more correct since, in 2016, the United States was living a new and intense process of a presidential campaign. Not surprisingly, Gaga was cast in February 2017 to hold the Super Bowl break show, the final match of the main US football league. The show is part of the most watched sporting event in the world and symbolic of American national pride (GERAQUE, 2018).

Gaga's move on the Dive Bar Tour seems to have brought to Joanne elements of the focus strategy (PORTER, 1986) since the action was directed primarily at Gaga fans and goers from places typical of American culture, bars in New York. Even though she later evolved into TV presentations and stage shows, Joanne seems to position herself as a middle ground between The Fame's mass product and Cheek to Cheek's distinctive work (ROLLING STONE, 2016).

The product/market matrix of Ansoff (1965) can be very useful in evaluating how Gaga diversified her own strategy throughout her career. For Ansoff (1965), there are four different strategies that can improve a company's business: the first, "market penetration", is when the company seeks to increase its share in its home business; the second, "market development", is the quest to conquer new markets with products already marketed; "New product development" is the third form of strategy in which new products are offered to the usual market; Finally, "diversification" is the strategy of reaching new markets with new products (ANSOFF, 1965).

A possible analysis using the matrix of Ansoff (1965) is that Gaga, in her first two albums, sought only market penetration; already in Cheek to Cheek the singer bet in the diversification like strategy to remain competitive; finally, Joanne can be understood as a new product for the usual market of Gaga, when the singer returns to commercial pop (even with other influences) as a proposal (ANSOFF, 1965). This explains the great functionality of the Dive Bar Tour, that is, to communicate the singer again with her audience of origin; This is a specific marketing strategy to announce a new product to her public (ROLLING STONE, 2016).

Thus, between The Fame and Joanne, you can see Lady Gaga diversifying not only her artistic product but also the markets of her performance, articulating different strategies of positioning her brand and business.

Perhaps the best current example of a company that adopts different market positions simultaneously is Coca-Cola. The soft drink titan is now able to act in completely different segments and markets, printing its brand on several other beverages such as teas, juices, and dairy, and also in clothes, household goods and even music festivals promoted by the company. It is not by chance that Coca-Cola is always among the most valuable brands in the Best Global Brands ranking (MCWILLIAMS, 2016).

What can explain such different projects get a positive response from the public? One of the possible explanations lies in the concept of strategy as a perspective, but first, it is necessary to mention the strategy approach focused on dynamic capabilities, which can help organisations to gain competitive advantage.

When analysing the move performed by Lady Gaga in Joanne, the American magazine Forbes pointed to a new ability of the singer: to reorient the directions of pop music and set trends. For the magazine, even if the soft rock sound that marks the album Joanne is still not the musical genre of the hits that play the most in the radio world (perhaps for the taste of the American public still in transit), Gaga influenced several works that followed, such as Miley Cyrus, Harry Styles, Kesha, and Justin Timberlake, who went the same way (MCINTYRE, 2017).

Lady Gaga acquired the condition of provoking changes in the music market, not just reacting to them, which probably only became possible after mistakes and hits that led to the singer's professional maturity. Today, Gaga is able to recognise her own capabilities and anticipate market opportunities to exploit them. This condition is linked to a model of strategic management that seeks to identify and exploit, within a business, its capabilities, and resources, dynamically, according to the demands of the market: this is what the theory will call "dynamic capacities".

According to Eisenhardt and Martin apud Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel (2010), companies use different resources in different combinations as markets change or even cause such changes. Under the influence of the Resource-Based View (RBV) approach, the dynamic capabilities theory understands the enterprise as a system of resources and capabilities that require leverage strategies aligned with the environmental context and that generate value for clients and owners (SIRMON; IRELAND apud MINTZBERG; AHLSTRAND; LAMPEL, 2010). Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997: 516) define the concept of dynamic capacity as "the firm's ability to integrate, build and reconfigure external and internal competencies in rapidly changing environments." For Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2010), dynamic capabilities are "a contemporary view of adaptive strategy as a conceptual design process" (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, Lappel, 2010, 214).

This adaptive strategy provided by dynamic capabilities is echoed in the continuous application of the SWOT analysis, a model for periodically evaluating the organization's strengths and weaknesses, as well as environmental threats and opportunities (MINTZBERG, AHLSTRAND; LAMPEL, 2010). It is this dynamic strategic positioning, based on the combination of emerging forces and opportunities that Gaga and her entrepreneurs seem to have been able to accomplish in their different brand strategies: voice, fashion, performance, all this is no longer a tumultuous combination and incomprehensible one-time offer (as in ArtPop) to be a set of articulated capacities according to the market demand (TEECE, PISANO, SHUEN, 1997, MINTZBERG, AHLSTRAND, LAMPEL, 2010).

Gaga probably would not have used these different abilities to remain competitive if she had not mastered all the stages of the productive and commercial process of her art. In addition to composing her own songs, Gaga is a musical producer, instrumentalist, and arranger. This has never prevented the singer from having the collaboration of different producers and musicians in the production of her albums, but it is possible to identify a thread that gives meaning to the changes made by the singer in her career. For fans and the general public, the clear presence of Lady Gaga's personality in her different projects is the guarantee that her brand has an identity, even if in evolution (HSM, 2016).

Perhaps Microsoft's major flaw in the last decade has been just an incorrect perception of one's own skills and weaknesses. It has been years of investing in Windows as a mobile operating system (the old Windows Phone, currently Windows Mobile) that is tied to the sale of smartphones, especially after the acquisition of the Nokia brand in 2014. The size of the failure can be expressed in the market share of smartphones in 2016, Windows Phone: less than 1% (WEIR, 2016). Today, under the direction of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has already divested itself of virtually every division focused on the mobile phone market and prioritises investments in cloud computing and artificial intelligence services, and of course, the application of its famous Office in different platforms (CARVALHO, 2017, CIO, 2018).

Although the market offers opportunities, the brand needs to be aware of what it does best (HAMEL; PRAHALAD, 1990). The Joanne era is a step back in Lady Gaga's career, from the most discreet public image to familiar musical style, to an intimate tour. This step paved the way for Gaga to return to the most watched television shows, to the most notorious events, to popular culture. All this would not be possible without the impeccable voice, compositions that pleased the audience and, of course, the artistic personality of Gaga printed on the project.

What Lady Gaga and Microsoft have realised is that, rather than "embracing the world," it is more important to understand the competencies that identify your brand, which make you recognised and consumed by the world, even if the latter - your buyer's market - is less than the claims already made.

When Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2010) sought a definition of strategy, they eventually proposed five: the "5 Ps of strategy", as the authors' approach to the topic became known, is the synthesis of the abundant and heterogeneous theory about strategic management (MINTZBERG; AHLSTRAND; LAMPEL, 2010). Among the five Ps proposed by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2010), those who diverge about the content of the strategy are the concepts of perspective and position: the first concerns the essential way of doing things in an organisation, his great vision for the business; the second refers to the market location where the customer and the product are located; a look outside the organisation. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2010) argue that concepts are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

An excellent example used by the authors to aid in understanding these concepts is the launch of the EggMcMuffin - a traditional American breakfast - by the McDonald's fast food chain. Is it a change of position of the company (for the breakfast market) or is it just another product within the "McDonald's" way of doing things? The answer seems to depend only on how it is looked at, whether inside (perspective) or out (position) of the organisation. For Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2010), the change of position was only possible in this case because the company's perspective was maintained.

Based on these concepts, it is possible to affirm that the changes in Lady Gaga's career - her brand repositioning, the tailoring of her image, the search for markets other than pop music - was only successful because, in some ways, the Lady Gaga way of being has been preserved. The extravagant appearance, the affection in the interpretive modes, the joyful and dancing songs, everything seems, to some extent, to have been kept from the first to the last album.

As previously mentioned, Cheek to Cheek was a project that Lady Gaga had glimpsed since 2012, but providentially left the role only after the problems faced in the ArtPop era. Although some questioning about Gaga's actual artistic motivations has emerged (see journalist Mikael Wood's Los Angeles Times review) (WOOD, 2014), it seems that the context in which Gaga's career was found served as a justification for the sudden change of musical genre. In this sense, it was easy for the general public to understand the step taken by Gaga as legitimate and necessary to the moment that the singer lived; if there was a change of perspective of the brand Lady Gaga, this change was careful not to pass on to the customer the idea of lack of identity or even opportunism.

Gaga was criticised when she debuted in the cinemas starring in the film "Machete Kills"; two years later, her interpretation in the series American Horror Story would yield her a Golden Globe. When she had to cancel shows due to her fibromyalgia (including Rock in Rio Brazil in 2017), she soon managed to produce, along with Netflix, a documentary sharing her drama due to the disease. There is no shortage of ups and downs in Lady Gaga's career, but in her different steps, the singer seems to have succeeded in getting her perspective to prevail over situations at first unfavourable to her (BARBOSA, 2017).

Gaga was able to hone her "music-art" concept, less like an avalanche of poorly connected artistic proposals, more like the ability to explore different skills as the market demands. On the other hand, Gaga knew how to reinforce the values of her brand while it promoted necessary changes in the product that offers, to the extent that the public also changed; and also to provoke changes in the public itself, creating market opportunities, trends, mutual learning. In the midst of all these changes, Gaga's personality, that which gives her brand identity, remains from The Fame to Joanne.

To conclude this point, another corporate example, this time of a poorly-conducted market positioning strategy: this is the giant Yahoo!. The $ 125 billion internet portal sold in September 2016 for only $ 4.5 billion to Verizon. The steps leading to its decline are numerous, beginning with expensive acquisitions of brands such as Flickr and GeoCities, at the time promising, but currently with little relevance. Yahoo! had everything to be Google today, not only for having been the online guide to web browsing with more access in the United States but also for the opportunity it had to buy Google itself on two occasions when it was still a rising startup (BORNELI, 2016; SOUZA, 2017).

What is striking in the Yahoo! case is the unsuccessful attempts to be a social network, media portal, video sharing site, without obtaining a lasting competitive advantage in any of these markets. These strategic moves seem to clash with Yahoo!'s most basic competency: organising and sharing information on the internet (BORNELI, 2016, SOUZA, 2017). Unlike Lady Gaga, it seems that Yahoo! was missing a business vision, a perspective that would guide its market positioning.