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

Chapter 17. Partner with Entrepreneurs

You can smell a Grateful Dead concert before you even enter the parking lot—the scent in the air is a weird combination of frying sausage, pot smoke, and patchouli. Then, as you open your car door, you suddenly hear it: laughter, conversations, a clash of different Grateful Dead tunes. The song "Sugar Magnolia" is playing nearby, the sound a bit tinny from the bad car stereo, but from afar "The Wheel" booms from a professional sound system that a member of the Grateful Dead tribe is running from a gas-powered generator.

You've hung out at the scene dozens of times before, always making the journey with friends. The scene is wherever the Grateful Dead is playing tonight and it may be a different city, a different parking lot, and a different afternoon, but the scene is a comfortable constant in your crazy life.

Eager to find the center of the tribe, you follow your ears and your nose and soon you see it, rows and rows of makeshift stalls. Slowly, very slowly, you and your friends walk through, saying hello to people you know. You casually handle some of the merchandise on display, not so much because you might want to buy but rather to have a quick conversation with others in the Grateful Dead community. Homemade tie-dye T-shirts, lovingly crafted macramé bracelets, and leather belts are all on offer from itinerant Dead entrepreneurs. Hungry and thirsty from the long drive, you can choose from the many food and drink stalls—burritos, ...