Creativity , Innovation, Marketing and the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead wasn’t a band I grew up with, but I have read a great deal about their contrarian approach to marketing themselves. You see, many (if not all) of their marketing innovations seem to spur from doing the opposite of what other bands (and record labels) were doing at the time.
It may not be all that obvious, but the Grateful Dead actually pioneered many of the social media and inbound marketing concepts that businesses in all industries use today on the web. The internet has merely served as a catalyst to support its growth, scale and reduce the cost of entry. Their approach cultivated an extremely dedicated fan base of “Deadheads”, who often followed the band from concert to concert for literally years. Who wouldn’t want loyal customers like that?
They made a series of important choices to separate themselves from everyone in their industry, making difficult decisions that were very unpopular – except with their fans! For example, they allowed concert attendees to tape shows and distribute them to other fans for free. They also created special tickets and access for fans.
By taking these (then) radical actions, the Grateful Dead succeeded in building a loyal, word-of-mouth network of fans powered by free music. They understood that it was about the experience that the music provided instead of strictly the music itself.
Today’s successful companies have shifted their marketing focus away from outbound promotion of products and features, to create a demand at the top of the “marketing funnel” through a content strategy that focuses on the problems, needs and education of customers.
A key part of the new marketing model is to give away valuable information or sample product / services for free, so as to attract a larger base of prospective customers (after “experiencing” the product / service / approach / expertise of the company), and with a percentage of them willing to pay for a premium product or service. This approach is at the core of inbound marketing and describes the cutting edge of business development strategies for many businesses today.
This is why the more enlightened music artists are only too happy to give away their music for free, as they know they’ll make it all back (and more) on ticket and merchandise sales (assuming they are good enough to attract an appreciative audience of course).
The Grateful Dead were innovators in many areas. They played for the love of the music and their payback came later. They cultivated their tribe with free downloads, counter culture branding, great community and giving their fans what they wanted.
But this is more than just an interesting reminiscence…
For all business owners and CEOs, the most important leadership quality for success in business is now considered to be creativity – somewhat surprisingly even outweighing integrity in recent surveys.
Creative leaders are more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise and revenue models, and they are much more likely to rate innovation as a “crucial capability.”
As epitomised by the grateful Dead in the 1960’s.
