Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History

By: David Meerman Scott, Brian Halligan

Narrated by: Brian Halligan, David Meerman Scott

The Grateful Dead: rock Legends, marketing pioneers.

The Grateful Dead broke almost every rule in the music industry book. They encouraged their fans to record shows and trade tapes; they built a mailing list and sold concert tickets directly to fans; and they built their business model on live concerts, not album sales. By cultivating a dedicated, active community, collaborating with their audience to co-create the Deadhead lifestyle, and giving away “freemium” content, the Dead pioneered many social media and inbound marketing concepts successfully used by businesses across all industries today.

Written by marketing gurus and lifelong Deadheads David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead gives you key innovations from the Dead’s approach you can apply to your business. Find out how to make your fans equal partners in your journey, “lose control” to win, create passionate loyalty, and experience the kind of marketing gains that will not fade away!

©2010 David Meerman Scott, Brian Halligan (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

“Demand everything. Expect nothing.” (Bill Kreutzmann, cofounder and drummer, the Grateful Dead)

“I miss Jerry. And I wonder…is your brand iconic? Why not? Hint: it has nothing whatsoever to do with hemp brownies. Becoming iconic is a choice.” (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin, blogger, Deadhead)

The message

Loved the learning/stories method of delivering the message. Talking about money and making money using healthy examples is a joy.

Not your marketing as usual type of book

This is on my short list of must reads for any business owner, marketer, student, or executive who is not sure how to function, flourish and be comfortable in this new day of marketing and sales. Its ground breaking, common sense, plain English! Short, actionable chapters make it an easy read. Honest insight makes it memorable.

Making marketing fun with the Dead

I suppose you could write a boring marketing book about the Grateful Dead--but this is not it. This a short, strange and dead-fully fun look into marketing done the grassroots style a la Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and company.

The authors met through a shared interest in marketing and the realized they also shared a passion for the Dead. They had both logged a number of concerts and were confirmed Dead Heads.

This shared passion added to their years in marketing led them to combine the two in this breezy yet informative book. The Dead were crowd sourcers and copyright mavericks and interactive marketing gurus long before anyone ever thought about those concepts. The authors break down what worked for the Dead and then show how other companies gave applied those tools and how any company or creative might apply them in the context of a fluid, always changing on- and off-line world.

Not quite what I was expecting

I think I was expecting a Grateful Dead version of Chris Anderson's Free. Perhaps a professional voice actor is in order. Sounded too much like reading from a script.

Well done sirs

Great book... Brought words to aspects of business and life that I have lived and noticed throughout my journeys on this planet. Well read and well thought out. I liked the recaps with modern day examples.. And of course that the authors are from the greatest state in this country!!! :)

Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

despite being over 10 years, this photo. Remarkably well. As an unabashed Design Thinking Deadhead and "recovering marketeer," I loved it!