6 Mind-Blowing Learnings From The Grateful Dead (and How They Can Help Your Business)
by Roy Osing
Author of Be Different or Be Dead
Invaluable things you can do to BE Cherished by your Fans
1. Mix it up. Constantly innovate. Give your Fans a different look (value packages, promotions, events, fun) as often as you can. The Dead decided what songs to play when they began each concert – songs “on the run”. Risky? Yes. Original? Yes. Did their Fans love them for it? YES!
2. Enable your customers to fulfill themselves. Do what THEY want. The key here is the “Serving” mentality. Find out what they want and desire and take them there. The Dead created a bubble for their Fans and allowed them to reach emotional highs.
3. Focus on the experience not the product. The Dead did not try to sell records. They wanted to create mind-blowing experiences for their Fans. And guess what? (They sold lots of records).
4. Save the best deals for your best customers. Using Special Promotional Deals to entice people away from their supplier is a fool’s game in any event. What makes you think that if someone takes your Special Offer they won’t leave you in a heartbeat if someone else gives them one as well? You can’t grow your business by catering to the “promiscuous” crowd of constant switchers. Furthermore, what will your loyal customers say when they find out that you are not offering the special deal to them? (I can see their taillights already). The Dead ALWAYS saved the best ticket prices, seats and deals for their Fans. The result? The most successful touring band in history.
5. Do the opposite of what your competitors are doing. Observe ‘em and do a 180. You can’t stand-out if you copy. The Dead allowed their Fans to record their music in concert. No other band did. The 180 strategy created uniqueness and remark-ability that made them unforgettable.
6. Communicate with your Fans incessantly. AND figure out how to make it easier for them to communicate with one another. The Dead were fanatics when it came to having conversations with their Fans before Social Media arrived. Their Fans responded by not only attending concerts and other Dead Events, but also by talking up The Dead to their friends. The Dead virus spread…
You can learn a great deal about business from the most interesting and surprising sources.
Check out The Dead.
You can purchase a copy of Roy Osing’s book Be Different or Be Dead by following this link.
Donate2Play: Charity 2.0
Out of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada comes Donate2Play, a very social way for charities to generate funds and raise awareness.
As the story goes, three entrepreneurial friends from Vancouver Island, Tomas Ernst, Kelly Pereira, and Adrian Pereira, got together last year and decided they wanted to revolutionize fundraising.
The premise is straightforward: Donate2Play creates games for charitable organizations. Those who play the games are asked to donate. You can find examples here.
The overwhelming majority of the money donated goes to the charity, the rest towards developing the game.
Charities such as Hope for the Nations and the Ancient Forest Alliance are already on board.
Nice Work If You Can Get It: Developing Websites in Slovakia
At first glance, the homepage of the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava would appear to be the gateway to your average, run-of-the-mill website.
Yet appearances can be deceiving. For this website — for which the kid who mows your lawn on Saturdays or your nephew in Wichita might charge a hundred bucks or so – came with a price tag of over 25,000 euros (or $33,000), according to a report by Slovak daily SME.
The director of the gallery told SME that it was money well spent for the minimally designed site, though many a comment under the article disagreed with that assessment.
Of course, the Slovaks who are footing the bill for the site should be delighted that they got such a bargain. A couple of years ago, their neighbors to the south, Hungary, paid exponentially more for a presence on the worldwide web.
North Pole Entertainment Mogul Snow E. Mann Has Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn has added a distinctly Web 2.0 twist to holiday well-wishing.. Anyone who has checked the "Who's Viewed Your Profile" section on the right-hand side of the business networking side will have noticed that Snow E Mann, an independent snow management consultant, has perused their information.
Chelsea Clinton Ushers In a Great Week for Nepotism
I am hereby changing my name from Sancho Glickman. My new name is Sancho Bush Qualye Sarkozy Soros. Yes, I am the son of not one but four famous men, and because of that fact itself the job offers in media will do nothing other than start rolling in from now on.
There is no reason not to like Chelsea Clinton, and indeed every reason to like her. She is bright and articulate. But so are thousands of other folks trying to break into the media business through crummy entry level jobs. Yet, because their father wasn’t a president and mom a secretary of state, many are unlikely to advance as far as the former First Daughter and get a call for an opening at NBC.
Not to pick on the young lady. She is not alone. It is highly improbable that James and Lachlan Murdoch would sit in cushy boardroom chairs had not their father Rupert owned the portion of the broadcasting business that NBC does not.
And the familial favoritism this week does not stop in journalism. Despite Howard Buffett’s credentials as a modern-day Renaissance man – philanthropist, businessman, author, photographer, conservationist – could anyone possibly imagine his being chosen as the next non-executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway were his dad not Warren?
