David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan are about to release a book that is destined to be debated in business schools and communications classrooms, and hopefully board rooms as well. Riffing off an article in The Atlantic published in March of this year, they have brought together an iconoclastic volume called “Marketing Secrets of the Grateful Dead
This will blow your mind, especially if you are a deadhead. The band was amazingly innovative at a time when the expected model for making and selling popular music was cut the record-get stations to play it-support it with concerts-distribute the record through record stores – make money.
Instead, the Dead created a huge following of loyal fans by giving concerts, encouraging their fans to make tapes and share them with friends, and selling merchandise. Huh? It’s a great example of the power of careful branding a unique product, and putting their customers first.
The book hopes to provide readers with a step by step guide for marketers to similarly disrupt their industry. Should be a good read, and contains some great concert images from the old days. In the tradition of paying it forward, the authors are donating 25% of their profits to the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz.
And the Archive is following the model by curating concert tapes made by deadheads over the years. It already has an active blog and, of course, loyal and passionate fans.
