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Rob Barraco on the Dead, taping concerts, and building a fan base

Rob Barraco plays keyboards and vocals for Dark Star Orchestra. From 1999, Rob has been part of Phil Lesh and Friends and in 2002 he joined with the original members of the Grateful Dead for the Alpine Valley reunion shows and then toured with them in 2002 and 2003.

In this video shot backstage at the Gathering of the Vibes festival I talk with Rob about touring with the Dead, the phenomenon of the tapers, and what that means to promoting a band and building a scene.

Favorite (slightly paraphrased) quotes:

“It was genius to allow [taping] because it propagated the whole scene.”

“Going to Dead shows is like your last chance to join the circus before you have to give it all up and go onto adulthood.”

“The scene is bigger than the music and the musicians.”

Dark Star Orchestra shows are built off the extensive catalog of the Grateful Dead. On any given night the band will perform a show based on a set list from the Grateful Dead's 30 years of extensive touring or use the catalog of original songs and often played covers to create a unique set list for the show.

Direct link to video.

Give back to your community: A marketing lesson from the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead frequently threw their support behind causes and ideas they believed in, especially anything related to improving life in their home base of San Francisco. This is an idea we discuss in chapter 18 of our book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History.

The Grateful Dead was remarkably generous, a brand attribute that contributed to their growth and prosperity over many years. There is a lesson here for all organizations.

Starting in the 1960s, the band participated in frequent benefit concerts, donating the proceeds to support a variety of important causes. For example, an early benefit for the Haight Ashbury Legal Organization, -- where the Grateful Dead and other acts performed at the Winterland Ballroom on May 30, 1966 -- raised $12,000 to fund legal help for those who could not afford it. Giving back to the community became an essential element of the band's brand image.

In 1983, band members established the Rex Foundation as a non-profit charitable organization to make it easier to support causes they believed in. The Rex Foundation enabled the Grateful Dead to better handle the countless individual requests for benefit concerts they received and, at the same time, support many more causes than they could with one-off concerts.

The first benefit concerts for the Rex Foundation were held in the spring of 1984 at the Marin Veteran's Memorial Auditorium. Then, each Spring, the band did a three night run at a venue in the San Francisco area with all profits going to the foundation. The Rex Foundation, in turn, makes grants to organizations focused on the environment (e.g. Women's Earth Alliance), human services (Hearts of Gold, for example enhances the lives of New York City’s homeless mothers and their children), and the arts (support of obscure composers such as Havergal Brian and Robert Simpson). The Grateful Dead concerts and activities have been the primary source of funds over the years but the Rex Foundation also accepts donations from citizens and corporations. Since it was founded, the Rex Foundation has granted $8.5 million to over 1,000 recipients.

Marketing Lesson from the Grateful Dead

When a company carefully chooses a particular charity or cause to support and makes it a part of their corporate culture, continuing the commitment over many years, the accrued benefits to the brand can be enormous.

Ronald McDonald House Charities

When we think of McDonald's restaurants, we think of children. Sure, the tasty food is a guilty pleasure for adults now and then too (after a Grateful Dead concert perhaps), but what comes to mind first is kids. So we find the Ronald McDonald House Charities, started by McDonald's Corporation in 1974, a fascinating example of Grateful Dead- style corporate giving. The organization is a non-profit and like the Rex Foundation accepts donations from others, but McDonald's Corporation is the largest corporate donor.

The organization was established to help families who travel far from home to get treatment for their seriously ill or injured children. Recognizing the division within families when children are away from home for long periods of time, the initial house in Philadelphia has grown to nearly 300 Ronald McDonald Houses in 30 countries offering families a way to stay together near the treatment hospital. Ronald McDonald Houses serve more than 10,000 families each day and in 2008, saved families more than $226 million in hotel costs.

Give back to your community

Of course most of us don’t have the ability to perform benefit concerts in front of 20,000 people, nor are we likely to work within a huge company that can invest in a Ronald McDonald's House sized effort.

Don't let that stop you from giving back! Follow the lead of the Grateful Dead and give back in your area of expertise.

For example, my co-author Brian Halligan and I both frequently speak as guest lecturers at colleges and Universities in the Boston area. We feel that providing our ideas to students at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Simmons, Babson, Emerson and other institutions is a worthwhile way for us to personally give back to our community. Not only benefits the students but positively benefits us too.

In addition, Brian and I are donating 25 percent of the royalties from Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead to the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to support further study of the Grateful Dead. www.gratefuldeadarchive.org

The Grateful Dead Archive represents one of the most significant popularcultural collections of the twentieth century. It documents the Dead’s incredible creative activity and influence in contemporary music history from 1965 to 1995, including the phenomenon of the Deadheads, the band’s extensive network of devoted fans, and the band's highly unusual and successful music business ventures. Press release from the archive here.

Brian and I have also lent our support to the archive’s marketing efforts as members of the advisory board.

Pick a way to give back to your community in some form consistent with you brand and start doing it now.

Grateful Dead book tour begins Monday. Join us!

Our book tour for Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead begins Monday July 26.

Join me and Brian Halligan in our Follow the Band Book Tour (hashtag #GDbook) as we present the ideas in the book, do some Q&A, sign books, host virtual events, and follow Furthur (Bob Weir and Phil Lesh) and Rhythm Devils (Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann).

Brian and I are so excited to hit the road and catch these bands in concert while talking about our new book!

We hope to see you at one of these events.

* * * Follow the Band Book Tour * * *

Monday, July 26th

Presentation, Tweetup, Q&A, and book signing: Barnes & Noble in Burlington, MA at 7:00 pm
details

Wednesday, July 28th

Discussion, book signing and Tweetup at the Roger Smith Hotel New York City at 5:00 PM
hotel information
For Special Twitter rates on Rooms use this link bit.ly/RSrooms

Concert: Further at Nokia Theater in New York at 8:00 pm.
This is a rather small venue and a terrific place to see Furthur in an intimate setting.
The show is sold out, but tickets may be available at Stubhub
details

Thursday, July 29

Discussion and book signing: Barnes & Noble book in Stamford, CT at 12:00 noon
details

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT Day 1
Get your tickets here.

Friday, July 30th

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport Day 2

Featuring Furthur and many other bands.
Get your tickets here.

Book signing: Please stop by and say hello to me and Brian from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in the Gathering of the Vibes Merchandise Tent.

Saturday, July 31st

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport Day 3

Featuring The Rhythm Devils
Get your tickets here.

Book signing: Meet us from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Gathering of the Vibes Merchandise Tent

August 10th

Webinar: What Every marketer can learn from the most iconic band in history

Join basketball legend and Grateful Dead fan Bill Walton (who wrote the foreword to our book, with me and Brian Halligan at 12:00 noon eastern time.

details

Efficiency and cranking stuff out

Joe Chernov emailed me: "My question to you is this: how are you SO prolific? Where do all of your ideas come from?"

In the past few days about a dozen people have asked me how I can crank out so much stuff.

I announced my new book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History (written with Brian Halligan) on Friday. The book releases in the next week or so.

And in November, I have another book coming out called Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.

In addition, I’ll write about 100 blog posts and deliver about 50 talks all over the world.

I'm not as fast a typist as Chris Brogan. So that isn't how I can create so much.

Here's how I do it.

I love what I do. So writing books, thinking up ideas for blog posts and delivering talks is not really “work.”

I don't procrastinate. When I have a good idea in my mind or I am on deadline, I crank it out.

I don't have to sit in any damn meetings (unless I want to).

I'm always looking for material. I travel the world giving talks and really dig when I find a great example of great marketing or PR that needs to be told.

I am an efficient writer. One way I stay efficient is with Text Expander for the Mac which I was turned onto by my friend Steve Johnson. The product allows for codes for long strings of text that I use frequently. When I want to type "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History", all I do is type “mlgd\” and the application fills in the rest. I've got about 100 things with codes. So, for example, it takes me just a few seconds to reply to a speaking inquiry.

I repurpose content. Blog posts that have a positive reaction from people frequently become stories in one of my books.

I put my internal editor on hold for first drafts. A technique called "Freewriting" that I learned from Mark Levy in his book Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content allows me to get ideas down very quickly without seeing if it is "good." (Mark's book is just about to release in its second edition.) With Freewriting, I write and write and write for ten minutes or thirty minutes without caring about spelling or grammar. Then I look for nuggets of inspiration, which I edit to become blog posts.

How about you? How do you stay efficient and crank it out?

Image: Shutterstock / matka_Wariatka

New book! Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

Our secret is out.

For the past four months, I have been quietly working on a book with my friend Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot on a book project.

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History

The book came off the printer today and will begin shipping from online bookstores next week. It will be in stores throughout North America first week of August.

You can participate in our Follow the Band Book Tour (hashtag #GDbook). We're kicking the tour off on HubSpot TV this afternoon at 4:00 eastern and will follow Grateful Dead member bands Furthur and Rhythm Devils at the end of July culminating with a book signing at the Gathering of the Vibes festival.

Home base for the tour will be our Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead Facebook page.

The Grateful Dead-rock legends, marketing pioneers

Starting in the 1960s the Grateful Dead pioneered many social media and inbound marketing concepts that businesses across all industries use today. The 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.

Brian and I are lifelong Deadheads and have been writing and speaking about the band for many years. We decided to collaborate on this book because the lessons are so important today. These lessons are an important tool for helping to understand the new marketing environment in language and examples that are familiar to all. The Grateful Dead is one huge case study in contrarian marketing. Most of the band's many marketing innovations are based on doing the exact opposite of what other bands (and record labels) are doing at the time.

Foreword by Bill Walton

We're honored that the "world's biggest Deadhead" 6'11" basketball star Bill Walton has written a foreword to the book. Bill has seen the band more than 750 times, becoming a fan as a California high school student in 1967. When we had lunch with Bill, he told us that he played better ball the days after he saw a show.

Here's what Bill says about the book:
"Brian and David’s newest book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, is like a powerful, hard-charging anthem that fills in so many blanks while closing the circle of life all around us. Like the Grateful Dead, Brian and David are transformational visionaries with a keen eye for the second set."

Band photos, original illustrations, and amazing design

Throughout the book are remarkable photographs from Jay Blakesberg, a San Francisco-based photographer whose work has appeared on hundreds of covers and feature articles for numerous magazines including Rolling Stone, Guitar World, and Guitar Player. Jay began photographing the Grateful Dead as a high school student in 1978 and joined the travelling caravan that followed the band in the 1980s. In later years, he worked closely with the band and was given access to create much more intimate and exclusive images.

We also include amazing original illustrations by Richard Biffle, an artist whose mystical fantasy pieces inspire many minds. For more than twenty years Richard has been working with the Grateful Dead (as well as the individual band members spinoff projects), creating the fantastic artwork seen on Dead posters, merchandise, and CD covers.

My friend Doug Eymer designed the book. It is stunning, 1960s like but modern.

Here are a few early reviews of the book

"Halligan and Scott have written one of the most inspired, practical, and unconventional books on the business bookshelf. Want to develop a cult-like following, establish a new category, and do what you love? Scott and Halligan—calling upon their innate marketing savvy and inspired by their passion for the Grateful Dead—show you how."
- Marc Benioff; Chairman & CEO, salesforce.com

"For years, business theorists and corporate strategists have pointed to the Dead’s example for insights into perennial issues and emerging challenges. Scott and Halligan focus on one key factor in the band’s extraordinary artistic and business success—their iconic and enduring identity, not just as a band but as a brand. The authors’ real appreciation for the Dead phenomenon, and their compelling and creative analyses of the Dead’s marketing acumen, make this thought-provoking survey mandatory reading."
- Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist, UC Santa Cruz

"Jerry Garcia and his band were brilliant marketers. They understood that you grow your fan base one fan at a time and they constantly came up with things to energize their base while continuing to build it. As committed fans and talented marketing pros, Brian and David have created a book that is both entertaining and informative."
- Jim Irsay, Owner and CEO, Indianapolis Colts and owner of Jerry Garcia's guitar, Tiger

"David and Brian share my deep passion for music and its inspiration in our everyday lives. In Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, they combine their marketing expertise with a zeal for one of the most successful and iconic bands of all time. They mold two subjects that are seemingly poles apart into one breakthrough book that is as entertaining as it is enlightening."
- Del Breckenfeld, Director, Entertainment Marketing, Fender Musical Instruments Corp. & author of The Cool Factor: Building Your Brand's Image Through Partnership Marketing

"Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead explores the phenomenon created by the Grateful Dead showcasing the extraordinary power of music and the innovations the Dead developed to connect and bond with their audience."
- Michael Lang, co-creator & Producer of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Festival and author The Road to Woodstock

Buy the book

You can buy the book these booksellers

Amazon.com

Borders

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million.com

800-CEO-Read

Versions for Kindle and other ebook readers coming soon.

Brian and I were in the studio last week recording the audiobook. It will be released in a few days.

We hope that our combined 50 years of intense interest in the Grateful Dead combined with another 50 combined years of experience as marketing professionals has created a book that’s valuable to both Grateful Dead fans and newbies alike.

++++++++++++++++

UPDATE August 4, 2010

If you’re interested in reading more about the Dead's business and marketing strategy, check out Radical Marketing: From Harvard to Harley, Lessons from Ten That Broke the Rules and Made It Big, by Glenn Rifkin & Sam Hill. The book features a chapter on the Dead that is definitely worth a read.

The chapter in the 1999 book built on Rifkin's 1997 article How to 'Truck' the Brand in strategy + business.

I eagerly read the article when it first came out more than a decade ago and again early this year as Brian and I were researching our book.

Hat tip to Rifkin as this article was the first time the ideas of the band as brilliant marketers was discussed in print. Rifkin is a veteran business author and New York Times reporter.

Join us on our Grateful Dead book Follow the Band Book Tour

Brian Halligan and I just announced our new book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History

Join us in our Follow the Band Book Tour (hashtag #GDbook) as we conduct book signings, host virtual events, and follow Furthur (Bob Weir and Phil Lesh) and Rhythm Devils (Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann) this summer! Brian and I are out to have some fun, meet fellow marketers and Deadheads, and boogie at some shows. We hope to see you at one of these events.

Home base for the tour will be our Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead Facebook page.

Hashtag #GDbook

* * * Follow the Band Book Tour * * *

Monday, July 26th

Book signing: Barnes & Noble in Burlington, MA at 7:00 pm
details

Wednesday, July 28th

Book signing and Tweetup at the Roger Smith Hotel New York City at 5:00 PM
hotel information
For Special Twitter rates on Rooms use this link bit.ly/RSrooms

Concert: Further at Nokia Theater in New York at 8:00 pm.
This is a rather small venue and a terrific place to see Furthur in an intimate setting.
The show is sold out, but tickets may be available at Stubhub
details

Thursday, July 29

Book signing: Barnes & Noble book in Stamford, CT at 12:00 noon
details

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT Day 1
Get your tickets here.

Friday, July 30th

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport Day 2

Featuring Furthur and many other bands.
Get your tickets here.

Book signing: Please top by and say hello to me and Brian from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in the Gathering of the Vibes Merchandise Tent.

Saturday, July 31st

Concert: Gathering of the Vibes music Festival at Seaside Park, Bridgeport Day 3

Featuring The Rhythm Devils
Get your tickets here.

Book signing: Meet us from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Gathering of the Vibes Merchandise Tent

August 10th

Webinar: What Every marketer can learn from the most iconic band in history

Join basketball legend and Grateful Dead fan Bill Walton (who wrote the foreword to our book, with me and Brian Halligan at 12:00 noon eastern time.

details

Read more: http://www.hubspot.com/webinars/how-to-market-your-business-like-the-most-iconic-band-in-history#ixzz0tqSRl4wh

August 25

Webinar: For our Australian friends. At 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.

September 3rd

Concert: The Rhythm Devils at Showcase Live in Foxboro, MA
details and tickets

September 22nd

Concert: Furthur at The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas
details and tickets

Why should you join us?

Picture a summer evening, and you are in a sold out concert hall or festival ground. The audience members have been partying all afternoon in the hot sunshine, hanging with old friends, meeting new ones, drinking, laughing, smoking…

The collective anticipation feels positively electric, enhanced by the stage which hums with hundreds of thousands of watts of pure power ready to rock. The house lights go down and a cheer goes up. Hundreds of tiny red lights on the band’s onstage equipment are visible, blinking on and off like fireflies as the musicians shuffle onto the stage.

Band members plug in and noodle around a bit on their guitars, backs to the audience. The drummer(s) settle in behind their kits. One sends out a cosmic boom from a bass drum, which we in the audience feel as much as we hear it. A cheer for the boom! Some people try to discern what song the band will open with from the quasi-riffs now being played. Set list savants predict the opener to their friends based on the algorithms they used that morning to query databases of every song ever played by the band.

Then quietly, slowly at first, the band coalesces around a familiar tune. They turn to face the crowd. The lights come up. The volume is cranked. And thousands of people collectively begin to boogie. Another Grateful Dead concert (or one by their various offshoots and solo projects) has left the station.

Join us!

Brand journalism from Boeing at the Farnborough Airshow

In May, I wrote about the Boeing site revamp in a post called The Plane Truth: Brand journalism and the new Boeing site.

Starting today, the smart communicators at Boeing have developed a site to showcase brand journalism at the Farnborough Airshow #Farn10.

The site went live today and throughout the next week they will populate it with stories about Boeing news and events at the show.

I love how the bylined articles and videos tell a story rather than push a product.

It's fascinating to see the brand journalism approach tied to a specific event.

Social networks and chewing gum in your hair

My friend Mark Amtower announced back in 2009 that he was considering leaving Facebook. He didn't.

Leaving a social networking site is tough. Because social networking is like a cocktail party, leaving a network is like trying to leave a party. When you do, you’re gone. Forever.

But it is so damned easy to join a social network.

Reminds me of chewing gum in your hair – easy to get in but tough to get out.

My solution is to resist joining networks. After all, you can’t go to every party. I’m still not on LinkedIn for example and here's why.

I'm never the first adopter of a new network. When I see critical mass, I jump in. For example, I started blogging in 2005, YouTube 2007 (I think), Twitter 2008, and Foursquare in January of this year. Many people were much earlier than me to these networks.

Personally, I'd rather focus on a few social networking sites than try to do everything. Because as Mark proves, it is tough to leave.

Image: Shutterstock / Sunny_baby

Hey CBS TV News - the Netherlands lost - Real-time #FAIL

As I write this blog post it is 15 hours since Spain won the FIFA World Cup.

Yet the CBS Television News site has this story on the site

The Netherlands Win World Cup

As I write this, the story has been tweeted more than 1,400 times since posted.

That the story, which is in draft mode, was sent in error is not all that unusual. These things happen. I recall about ten years ago the horror of accidentally sending a draft press release to the wires. Ugh. But they are usually spotted immediately and deleted.

In this case it has not been noticed by anyone at CBS News for ages – 15 hours on the real-time Web is an eternity in dog years.

My guess is that nobody at CBS News is monitoring Twitter in real-time or they would have seen all the tweets.

Thanks to my friend Remco Janssen, who lives in Amsterdam, for alerting us to this. He says it's fast becoming a trending topic in NL. (Remco, as you know, being part Dutch, I was rooting for NL. Too bad...)

In case the story is deleted, here is a screen shot and the text of the story.

The Netherlands Win World Cup

The Netherlands Wins First World Cup and Ends 22-Year Streak Without a Title of Any Kind

JOHANNESBURG, July 11, 2010 (CBS/ AP) The Netherlands defeated Spain by a score of SCORE to SCORE to win its first World Cup title.

Even with Spain dominating possession, it was the Netherlands that had the best chance to score after 75 minutes of Sunday's foul-filled World Cup final.

Arjen Robben took a through ball from playmaker Wesley Sneijder and went one-on-one with goalkeeper Iker Casillas, but his 62nd-minute shot was kicked out for a corner by Casillas' right foot.

Before that, it was Spain that had the best chances to take the lead and win their first World Cup.

Defender Sergio Ramos sent a header from Xavi Hernandez's cross on target, but goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg made the save in the fifth minute. Spain striker David Villa's left-foot volley from Xabi Alonso's cross then hit the side-netting in the 12th.

Spain ended a 44-year barren spell when it won the 2008 European Championship and can become only the third team to be world and European champion at the same time.

Spain's exquisite talent is reminiscent of that of the Dutch when "Total Football" carried them to the 1974 and '78 finals.

Mazda Australia social media Zoom Zoom

Last year, I was in Melbourne, Australia delivering a Social Media Masterclass and participating in a few Tweetups. I met James Duthie and we got to talking about Automaker websites around the world and how most of them are just big TV-like advertising sites.

James contacted me to say that Mazda Australia has re-vamped their approach.

We like what we see!

Right on the homepage is a big community section. Live tweets appear – on the homepage! – and there are links to community forums and blogs.

What's fascinating is that many of the links go outside of Mazda to owners club sites, commercial reviews, information from places like Hemmings, and independent blogs.

In my experience, very few companies have the guts to Lose Control of their Marketing. Marketers are trained to keep everything close and to only deliver the company line.

Good on you, Mazda Australia. Let me know the reaction to your exciting initiative.