Grateful Dead as brilliant marketers

[2 articles]

New book casts the Grateful Dead as brilliant marketers

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2010/07/new_book_casts_the_grateful_de.html

by Scott Kirsner
July 16, 2010

Out next month from Boston authors David Meerman Scott and Brian
Halligan is "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every
Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History." The book's
foreword is by Celtics great Bill Walton (a/k/a "Grateful Red"), who
attended more than 750 Grateful Dead shows.

Halligan, chief executive at the Cambridge marketing software firm
HubSpot, says that he and Scott decided to collaborate on the book
after reading an Atlantic Monthly article called "Management Secrets
of the Grateful Dead," and then creating a 2010 webinar they called
"Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead." The pair said they
started working on the book together just this past April.

"The Grateful Dead really created a category ­ they were a fusion of
rock, jazz, and country, with radical improvisation layered on top,"
says Halligan. "In the book, we talk a lot about their unique
business model. Instead of optimizing around selling albums, they
made the concert experience the center of the business model. Every
concert was unique, instead of the same songs played the same way,
night after night. It created a strong incentive to see them over and
over. And they let people tape the shows, because they figured that
more people would be exposed to their music, which would get more
people to pay for concert tickets."

Halligan notes that the Dead also created their own mailing list to
communicate with fans, asking for addresses at concerts and on album
covers, and they sold tickets directly to fans rather than using a
ticketing service.

Halligan says he hitch-hiked from Brewster, Mass. to his first
Grateful Dead show (in Saratoga, New York) while in high school;
Scott also saw his first show in high school, in New Haven, Conn. in 1979.

The back of the book includes perhaps the most unusual mix of
endorsements ever: Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann,
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, and Jim Irsay, co-owner of the
Indianapolis Colts (who happens to own the late Jerry Garcia's most
famous guitar, Tiger.)

Halligan and Scott will appear on HubSpot's weekly video webcast,
HubSpot.tv, today at 4 PM to talk about the book. They'll be doing a
signing later this month at the Gathering of the Vibes Music and Arts
Festival in Connecticut, where Further (featuring Dead members Phil
Lesh and Bob Weir) is performing. Other book related-events are
listed on Scott's blog.

Both Halligan and Scott are advisors to the Grateful Dead Archive at
UC/Santa Cruz, assisting with Internet strategy, and they're donating
25 percent of the book's proceeds to the archive.

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Marketing Lessons from The Grateful Dead

http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/entry/52441/marketing-lessons-from-the-grateful-dead/

Published on July 15, 2010

While 1960s countercultural jam band pioneers The Grateful Dead do
not have an image associated with the traditional business world,
they do have much to teach marketers, writes Copyblogger.

Following is a brief overview (with some reinterpretation) of four
key lessons marketers can learn from The Dead:

1.Give Away the Experience, Sell the Ancillaries: The Grateful Dead
allowed, and even encouraged, fans to make bootleg recordings of live
concerts, which gave a taste of the unique experience of attending a
Grateful Dead show. The widespread distribution of bootlegs greatly
increased the number of people interested in attending Dead concerts,
as well as buying T-shirts, etc.

2.Obtain a Unique Position: There are many rock bands, but not many
rock bands like the Grateful Dead. Even during the heyday of
psychedelic music in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Dead's
improvisational sound stuck out and occupied a niche in the market
nobody else was serving.

As the band's late lead guitarist/vocalist Jerry Garcia said,
"Grateful Dead fans are like people who like licorice. Not everyone
likes licorice, but the people who like licorice REALLY like licorice."

3.Create Action and Get Out of the Way: The Grateful Dead did not
police what fans did with their bootleg live recordings, even when a
thriving black market developed for them. After creating the action
of fans recording their shows, the Dead knew they had to let that
action take its own course, even at the expense of lost royalties for
live recordings.

4.Get the Payoff: Although a number of Grateful Dead offshoot bands
exist, the band itself ceased functioning following Garcia's death in
1995. Yet Grateful Dead recordings and merchandise sell briskly and
the band occupies a prominent place in American pop culture.

Dead Earn Dedicated Sirius Channel
One sign of the Grateful Dead's enduring legacy (and marketing savvy)
is the Sirius radio channel dedicated to the music of Grateful Dead
and its band members. Launched in summer 2007, Grateful Dead Radio
features music spanning the band's long career, live performances
from the band's own archives, bootleg performances from fans,
previously unreleased recordings, and special shows hosted by members
of the band.

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