Book Review: Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

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

by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan

ISBN-10: 0470900520

ISBN-13: 978-0470900529

Pros:

  • A great sense of humor.
  • Serious analysis of the success of the grateful dead.
  • "Bite-sized" lessons with examples and analysis.

Cons:

  • You may not get into it if you're not at least passingly familiar with The Dead.

Summary: A smart and deep book on how the Grateful Dead did everything right in marketing.  Great for progeeks because it is a geek phenomena analyzed in-depth.

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Steve’s Kill Your Cable Adventure #5: Finding The Off Switch

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Been awhile since I posted one of these columns, though at least you know I haven't been busy watching cable.

Essentially in the month since the last column, no one in my home has watched cable.  In fact, only recently did we go "hey, wait, we should cancel this."

The shift happened that quickly.

So now this week I've got to go get rid of Cable and TiVO.  Both have their own challenges, but it's also going to mean about $80 or so we don't spend a month.  So, yeah, if you've got a deluxe cable package, you're spending more, and that adds up.

Getting away from cable, after a short time, was pretty easy:

  • Hulu and Netflix of course made it easier to get old and new shows.
  • Some companies put their shows online anyway (though I expect there's some odd battles coming).
  • There are companies that put specific content online, such as anime.
  • If you really want it, get the DVD from Netflix, or buy one, or buy one and sell it to a  used media store. 

So pretty much if I want television of some kind, I can probably get it.  In other words, yes, you don't need cable.  Also you probably have Netflix anyway.

I also noticed definite psychological shifts:

  • We all know a lot of television is crap.  When you're not watching it, the crap becomes more, painfully, apparent.
  • Having cable is like having a ticket to a buffer of mediocrity.  You'll use it because it's there, but in actuality, you're not getting much out of it.
  • Having to decide on my entertainment and video viewing as opposed to flipping on the TV has gotten me exploring a wider variety of content.  Cable, in some ways, is also limiting.
  • My interest in different media extended to other areas of my life – such as webcomics.
  • I feel even more social.  Television doesn't become a tool of socialization so much as a tool for shared experiences.

The shift in mindset is still something I'm analyzing, and there will doubtlessly be more analysis to come.  In the end I came to the following conclusions:

  • You probably don't need cable and it might be good to get away from it.
  • It's easy to get away from it.
  • Cable companies are going to need to change radically to deal with the changes in the world – and I think they could, but I'm not sure they will (essentially becoming "internet providers plus").  Hint – potential career opportunity.

So probably one more column to come on how I turned it all off . . . then silence.

Followed by me watching Netflix.

– Steven Savage

 

Apple’s Easy iBook Author Tool

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As everyone predicted, Apple released an ez-iBook maker and there's controversy over it's features and possible lock-in since you can only publish to the iBookstore. Admittedly that's not surprising as it's a specialized ePub format so you can only read it as an iBook (that and I'm not seeing a lot of anger over Kindle . . .).

So what do I think?

  • This was inevitable. Apple had a platform and a book system and of course an authoring system was coming.
  • Content is king, but delivery pays the bills. This is also an inevitable financial model. Right now being a gatekeeper pays.
  • Amazon is going to follow suit so fast it'll make your head spin.
  • I'm not sure what, if anything, Microsoft will do.
  • This might mean more effective freelance writers – and more jobs.
  • This also means that rating systems are going to be even more important, as is good relations. So build that author platform.
  • Have I noted we REALLY NEED a universal book format everyone uses? We do.

– Steven Savage