CHAPTER 6

Embrace Technology

You may not expect it from a bunch of carefree guys who just want to play music, but the Grateful Dead has been pushing the technological boundaries of music for decades. The legendary concert experience—which inspired people to drop out of conventional society and follow the band from city to city—included customized setups so elaborate that the band had to invent the systems, because there was nowhere to buy the technology infrastructure.

 

Rolled out for the first time in 1974, the Wall of Sound took eight years of experimentation, $350,000 to create, and used 26,400 watts of power from fifty-five McIntosh 2300 amplifiers. It was so far ahead of any other rock band’s concert sound system, it catapulted the Grateful Dead into a different music-technology solar system. “The Wall” was also a visual work of art, including over 600 speakers (88 JBL fifteen-inch, 174 JBL twelve-inch, 288 JBL five-inch, and fifty-four ElectroVoice tweeters) in a huge geometric pattern that caused concertgoers to literally gasp when they first saw the setup.

 

Throughout the decades, technology has continued to be an essential element of live shows. For example, in the 1980s a $30,000 harmonic analyzer originally designed by NASA to evaluate the aerodynamic strength of metals was added to the live show equipment.

THE TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYED BY THE GRATEFUL DEAD AT LIVE SHOWS ENHANCED THE BAND’S MUSICAL CREATIVITY, MAKING THEM THE MOST SUCCESSFUL TOURING BAND IN HISTORY.

The band continues to innovate, using technology to facilitate the culture of openness and availability they have carefully cultivated over decades. When the surviving members of the band embarked on a 2009 tour as The Dead, they once again deployed technology to enhance the live concert experience and bring Deadheads together. The band released an iPhone application called The Dead Tour 2009—ALL ACCESS, which included streaming audio from all the shows on the tour, streaming video, live tweets of each song in the set list, blogs, photos, and photomosaic images.

 

At each stage of the band’s development, the Grateful Dead challenged and pushed to the limit what was possible based on the technology of the day. In the 1970s it was live concert technology and in 2009 it was a real-time iPhone application.

MARKETING LESSON FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD

Embrace Technology

Of course, it’s not just music and not just the Dead. We’re living in a Communications Revolution driven by advancements in marketing technology. With the explosion of new ways for people to communicate using real-time networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, plus the ability of any organization to become a just-in-time publisher via blogs, YouTube, forums, chat rooms, and wikis comes pushback within many companies.

Despite the enormous success of the Grateful Dead in pushing the limits of what is possible with available technologies, we see many companies that have yet to catch on with even mainstream technology. At most companies, marketing is a creative discipline, with artistic types dominating soft discussions about branding, image, and slogans. While these elements are important, technology is often pushed aside. Knowledge of technologies like web analytics, marketing optimization, customer relationship management systems, and social media aren’t a priority for many of the marketing departments and company executives we encounter.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD TEACHES US THAT EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY ENHANCES THE CREATIVE PROCESS AND DRIVES SUCCESS TO THE HIGHEST LEVELS.

Rather than embracing technology, many organizations actively discourage communications that use new technologies. Executives, Human Resources professionals, lawyers, and marketing executives insist that new forms of communications are a time-waster, not “real marketing,” and even dangerous (because people might, gasp, say “bad things”).

 

We’ve asked hundreds of companies about their use of social technologies and have observed that roughly 25 percent of companies we’ve encountered actually block employee access to YouTube, Facebook, and other social networking sites. That is a huge number of companies that are putting their organizations at a disadvantage.

 

Companies tell us that they block access to these sites for two main reasons: It is a drain to productivity and it may harm the company brand should employees reveal too much information.

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Even the U.S. Department of Defense embraces communications technologies, much like The Dead. In early 2010, the DoD released its official policy covering new media technologies. With some three million employees, the DoD is one of the largest organizations in the world, so this was big news.

 

The policy, Directive-Type Memorandum 09-026, which was effective immediately, states that DoD employees (including the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines) can use and participate in new media and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and forums. Prior to the directive, there were restrictions placed on certain technologies within some service branches.

 

The DoD understands that it’s not about controlling the technology anymore. It’s about giving people who work in the armed services access to technology so they can communicate in the ways that their peers, friends, family members, and general public demand.

 

Now, service members within the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines may make most of their information freely available, serving to market those organizations to people both abroad and at home. What’s fascinating about the DoD Social Media Policy is how far out in front the military is, compared to many corporations. The U.S. military is using marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead! (What would Jerry Garcia think?)

 

Instead of blocking access to social media sites, company executives need to understand that this is the way people communicate in 2010. People are able to better maintain relationships on Facebook and LinkedIn. They share what they are up to on Twitter and Foursquare, and publish valuable information on YouTube and blogs.

ROCK ON

Develop your company’s social media guidelines

 

It’s not only huge organizations like the DoD that need social technology policies and guidelines. All organizations (even those with a handful of people) should have a set so that the people within those organizations understand how to best use this technology.

 

ACTION: Develop guidelines for your organization.

 

Assemble a team composed of appropriate stakeholders (executives, human resources department, legal staff, PR people, and others) and study available guidelines from other organizations like IBM, Telstra, the U.K. government, and the U.S. DoD. Often you can find these documents online. From there you can craft your own set of guidelines, appropriate for your company. Publish the guidelines for all employees to see and talk up the use of technology to develop a culture around its use.