Today is a treat for me. And hopefully for you. For the first time in the history of Keitharsis, I actually get to help break news.
This is going to be a uncharacteristically long post. However, in the spirit of the Grateful Dead and this new book, consider it a jam session. Let's wander and wonder, and in the end, leave feeling better as we re-enter our respective worlds changed and somehow more connected to each other.
That's what this post is really about: connecting with each other in spiritual-like ways around a shared passion or cause.
Meet David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a best-selling author and an in-demand speaker all over the world. He is known for the "new rules of marketing." As a matter of fact, type that phrase into Google and take a look at what you get.
David owns that phrase. And a few others.
I had the pleasure of spending a day with David last October when I helped create and coordinate a two-day marketing summit with my company here in Atlanta. I was blown away at how passionate, knowledgeable and eclectic he was. He's a Renaissance man: a man after my own heart.
Why You Are a Marketer (Whether You Think You Are or Not)
No matter what you do in life, whether you are a mother, a marketing executive, a creative writer, a pastor, a church ministry team leader, a cub scout den leader, a nonprofit volunteer or head of the PTA, YOU ARE IN MARKETING. That may make some of you feel icky, because you equate "marketing" with peddling, spin and gimmicks.
That's not marketing. That's greed hiding in piles of bullshit.
Marketing is the art and science of spreading ideas. It's about influencing choice. It's about giving a damn about something, and doing whatever you have to do to influence others to give a damn.
All of us have a cause we believe in, and a product or store we love. Your cause may be spreading your writing. Or spreading the word about your church. Or advocating for adoption. Whatever you deeply and passionately care about, you want to share it with others. Right? That's marketing.
What The Grateful Dead Can Teach You About Marketing
David was gracious enough to carve time out to answer some questions around his new book. Here's what we discussed (David's responses are in italics):
1. The Grateful Dead approach is NOT a profit-centered approach to marketing. It’s a lifestyle/values-oriented approach, where profit is a by-product. This is great news for nonprofits and churches (who already passionately pursue specific causes), but how does the Grateful Dead approach apply to the local hair salon, restaurant owner or independent consultant?
The Grateful Dead did a few things brilliantly. First, they did what they loved. They truly enjoyed playing live gigs. If you do what you love (styling hair for example) it will show in your work and you will gain fans as a result. Those who just "work to get paid" usually don't attract a following. Second, the Dead treated fans with respect. Fans were on a mutual odyssey with the band.
2. You emphasize the importance of eccentricity in the book. With the Grateful Dead, it seems they were able to pull off a logical impossibility: they gave people who wanted to stand out a way of fitting in (while still standing out). What process did they use to attract the stand-outs, then give them a tribe they can belong to without threatening their fans’ intense pride in standing out?
When every other band focused on album sales as the primary revenue model with touring to support the album, the Dead focused on touring. Albums were secondary. They challenged the accepted music industry business.
There were interesting subgroups wandering along as part of the larger odyssey that was the Grateful Dead experience. At many shows you saw Deaf Heads, people who could not hear the music but felt it through balloons that they held in front of them. As one would expect from a community as inclusive as Deadheads, many people who were not hearing-impaired learned how to sign “hello” to their fellow travelers. Spinners, another subgroup, enjoyed finding a bit of open space in the venue to spin, and spin . . . and spin . . .in ecstasy to the music. It was a common sight that brought smiles to everyone’s faces. The band noticed the Spinners and began installing speakers in the concourse area of the concert arenas so the spinners could enjoy quality sound, too, making Spinners true traveling companions on the odyssey instead of outliers.
3. The Grateful Dead approach also appears to be a slow-burn model, not a rocket launch. In other words, they built their fan base one gig at a time over many years. Likewise, you have built your fan base and reputation one seminar and speech at a time over many years. Serving a cause requires great personal sacrifices, and buckets of sweat and frustration. Please share a case study or two from your book that captures how hard work and persistence paid of for the Grateful Dead and other business leaders/artists?
The Grateful Dead experimented with musical forms and genres—both as a group and individually—creating unique musical experiences.
Truly passionate about experimentation, individual band members constantly worked with different instruments. Garcia, for example, played the electric guitar, bluegrass banjo, pedal steel guitar, and mandolin, while McKernan played keyboard instruments, harmonica, and different percussion instruments. Hart and his partner in drums, fellow Rythym Devil Kreutzmann, experimented with various materials and instruments. During each concert’s drums duet, you might hear sounds from metal pipes or garbage cans as well as esoteric instruments like the African talking drum, one of the oldest instruments in the world, used by West African griots.
Because they did so much experimentation/improvisation and because each show was unique, they made a lot more mistakes than most other bands. As Jerry Garcia once said, “You go diving for pearls every night but sometimes you end up with clams.” If you attended four or five shows, one or two of them might be a real dud in terms of performance. It wasn’t unusual to see a poor show one night followed up by a great show the next night.
4. You wrote a brilliant post following Obama’s election where you analyzed and drilled-down on his marketing tactics. Are there parallels between Obama’s campaign and the Dead’s approach? How are they similar? Different?
The Grateful Dead teaches us to treat customers with care and respect. Yet we see so many organizations that do precisely the opposite. Instead of putting loyal customers first, they ignore them while they try to get new ones. While we’re all for growing a business, we don’t think it should come at the expense of annoying existing customers.
It was Saturday, August 23, 2008, and U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama was set to announce his choice of running mate. Conventional PR rules would suggest that the Obama for America campaign issue a press release and let the television channels, newspapers, news web sites, and other outlets of mainstream media break the news in real time. But that’s not what the Obama campaign did.
Instead, the candidate announced the news to fans first, via IM, e-mail, and this tweet from the candidate’s Twitter feed at @BarackObama: “Announcing Senator Joe Biden as our VP nominee. Watch the fi rst Obama-Biden rally live at 3 P.M. ET on http://BarackObama.com.” Supporters learned of the Biden nod ten minutes before mainstream media. The Obama campaign alerted their most important supporters first! (Of course, smart journalists could have subscribed to the @BarackObama Twitter feed or e-mail list to get the news, too.)
It was this kind of attention to the most ardent supporters that helped get Obama elected.
5. A key to building a movement is spreading the “idea” of the movement (i.e. the culture, the code, the language, etc.). In the book you talk about turning customers into evangelists. Any experienced marketer, writer or blogger knows that this is easier said than done. It’s VERY hard to get anyone to give a damn about your cause. In your experience, and through your study of the Dead, what types of things get passed on the most? What moves someone from a being a spectator to a participant?
The Grateful Dead made it easy to spread their music because they didn’t place barriers around it.
No band freely shared their music with fans the way the Grateful Dead did—rather than working against them, setting their music free only fueled their success as Deadheads spread their music far and wide. Each tape was like an advertisement that attracted new people to one of their concerts. The more concerts the Grateful Dead performed, the more tapes were in the marketplace. The more copies were made of the tapes, the more advertisements were in the marketplace pulling in new customers.
You want to make it as easy as possible for people to spread your content through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. Putting registration barriers (email requirements) in front of your content will stop it from spreading.
Setting your remarkable content free and enabling people to share it on social media sites, enables spreadability.
6. Given all your travels and interaction with companies and professionals all over the world, what do you find yourself most consistently frustrated with that you wish folks would wake up, understand and apply?
HAVE FUN
7. Okay, American Beauty is considered a masterpiece by many. Do you have a favorite Grateful Dead album?
For studio albums, I like Workingman's Dead. However, I really like the live show recordings the best.
8. Who are some of your all-time favorite bands/musical artists, besides The Grateful Dead?
I have seen more than 300 bands in concert. Some memorable ones -- the Clash, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. Tonight, as I write this, I am on my way to see the Dead Weather (Jack White's new band). Whoever is playing live is my favorite at that moment.
Thank you, David!
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David, his co-author Brian Halligan and their collaborators have big plans for this book. They've announced a book tour with lots of interesting activities. Visit David's blog, Web Ink Now, to learn more. If your interested, you can join the fan page on Facebook.
(Psst...click on the photo of the book cover above to link to Amazon. I have a book review there.)
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Hey Keith
Many thanks for doing the Q&A with me!
You are someone who practices the GD techniques we talk about. In particular, you always seem to love what you do.
Keet up the great work.
David
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | July 16, 2010 at 01:25 PM