Marketing Tips from the Grateful Dead Part Two
Remember last Wednesday’s post? Well here are marketing tips from the Grateful Dead–tips 3 through 5! To refresh your memory, these tips come from Brian Halligan and David Meerman Scott’s book on Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History.
3. Bring People on an Odyssey
In this section Halligan and Scott begin by acknowledging, of course, the music of the Grateful Dead is terrific which is fundamental, but admit that it’s more than just the music. With the Grateful Dead, it is the idea of an Odyssey–the idea that a Grateful Dead concert or a series of concerts is an experience. Fans made friends on the tours; they describe concerts as an escape where you could be yourself and simply do the things you enjoyed doing. So ok, how does that tie into marketing? What can we do to help along this process of creating an Odyssey? Halligan and Scott advise us to remove the barriers that are not allowing people to “talk the way they want to talk.” And to make it even easier, create content online that people can talk about, that they’re interested in talking about, content that is easy to share. This content can be in the form of a blog post, a webinar, an ebook, a video, a podcast. The form doesn’t matter, what matters is interesting, invigorating content.
4. Encourage Eccentricity
The Grateful Dead had abundant eccentricities: their name itself, the fact that they played 20-30 minute improv songs, that they played two 1 1/2 hour sets, that they encouraged fans to be eccentric themselves. For instance, the band would put speakers in the halls of their concert venues so that the “spinners” (those who would go into the hall and spin and spin and spin) could do so while still hearing the music. The Grateful Dead taught us that ”we are all eccentric in some ways.” And that “smart companies understand eccentricities and create a market from them.” We, as marketers, need to find the people who are eager to do business with us. Whatever you do when you do your marketing, make your personality come through. “Don’t be boring,” say Halligan and Scott, consumers want interesting, they want marketers to solve their problems in an interesting, fun way.
5. Do What You Love
This piece of advice is something I, too, strongly believe in. Halligan and Scott note that Jerry Garcia was always happy on stage. He always talked about how much he loved and wanted to spread the music to people. When he started the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia was living out of his car, teaching guitar lessons to get by. “The Grateful Dead teach us to live our own dreams–not someone else’s.” They council us to always go with your passion, that it will help guide you through the ups and downs. If your job is doing what you love, “you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
So there you have it, 5 tips from Brian Halligan and David Meerman Scott’s book on marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead. I hope you enjoyed my rendition of these tips as much as I enjoyed watching their webinar. If you are interesting in hearing more about how The JAR Group can help you be more like the Grateful Dead in your marketing strategies, email us at askjar@thejargroup.com with “Grateful Dead” in the subject line. Looking forward to hearing from you!
