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Tony D'Amelio

By: Tony D'Amelio on February 7th, 2014

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Lessons Learned from The Grateful Dead – Rock Icons and Marketing Pioneers

(by Tony D'Amelio - @DamelioNetwork) -- The Grateful Dead were way ahead of their time in their approach to building business.

One huge case study in contrarian marketing, most of the band's marketing innovations are based on doing the exact opposite of what other bands (and record labels) were doing at the time. They 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.

Real-Time marketing and sales strategist DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT is a huge fan of the Dead and also co-author of Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead – What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History. Unwittingly, the Dead pioneered many social media and inbound marketing concepts successfully used by today by forward-thinking companies like Dropbox and Burton Snowboards to build an active following. Watch this video clip.

David is author of ten books including The New Rules of Marketing & PR, the bestselling book of its kind over the last five years with over 300,000 copies in print, in its 4th edition and in 26 languages. His Real-Time strategies take advantage of the new communication tools to generate attention for your product, services or ideas. His next book, The New Rules of Sales & Service, will be out in October.

I hope you’ll take a moment to watch some of David Meerman Scott’s online videos. His strategies are perfect for those intent on growing business, driving sales and sharing ideas.

About Tony D'Amelio

Tony has spent his career putting talented people and audiences together, first in the music business and later representing the world's leading speakers. After concluding 27 years as Executive Vice President of the Washington Speakers Bureau, Tony launched D'Amelio Network, a boutique firm that manages the speaking activities of a select group of experts on business, management, politics and current events. Clients include: Mike Abrashoff, Vernice "FlyGirl" Armour, Mariana Atencio, Chris Barton, Geoff Colvin, Daryl Davis, Suneel Gupta, Ron Insana, Katty Kay, Polly LaBarre, Nicole Malachowski, Ken Schmidt, Bill Walton, and Bob Woodward.

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