This summer, the 3D version of Jurassic Park is coming out.

And the real-life dinosaurs are coming back to life as well.

Fleetwood Mac is on tour. The Rolling Stones just announced their dates. And The Eagles are criss-crossing North America once again.

You won’t be hearing many new songs – if any at all – at these shows. You’ll hear the hits. You better be careful with how many drinks you have, because it will be tough to find a song that you could use for a pee break.

All three of these legendary bands recognize what their customers want, and they deliver.

The Stones, celebrating 50 years together, have been a nostalgia act for 25 of those years. They recorded all but four of their albums in their first 25 years together. Once their fans demanded the old hits, the band wisely obliged. The last relevant new Stones album was 1989′s Steel Wheels. Okay… maybe the 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.

The Eagles haven’t made relevant new music since 1979 and The Long Run.

Fleetwood Mac hasn’t made relevant new music since 1987′s Tango In The Night.

So here are my questions for you:

Do you truly know and appreciate what your customers want from you?

Do you wake up every day with a commitment to deliver what they want?

Or do you fill up your concert with pee-breaks and songs your fans don’t really want to hear?

Steve Jobs claimed it was his mission at Apple to make customer’s hearts sing.

That’s a pretty good mission, and it is one that Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and The Rolling Stones totally buy into.

Click here to order your paperback or Kindle version of Brand Like a Rock Star: Lessons From Rock ‘n’ Roll To Make Your Business Rich and Famous.  The book will take you backstage to reveal the core marketing strategies of rock legends, and show you have to make them work for your business right away. You’ll turn you customers into loyal fans.

PS – have you visited the Brand Like a Rock Star Facebook page? I would love to have you join and be part of the discussion.

Photo credit: Dinosaur image courtesy of stock.xchng user Totek

Photo courtesy of www.shutterstock.com/g/belovodchenko

Nobody will remember how you handled yourself when things were going great.

You will be defined based on your struggles.

Fleetwood Mac went into the studio in 1976 with every relationship in the band falling apart. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were splitting up, John and Christine MacVie were getting divorced, and Mick Fleetwood had just discovered his wife was having an affair with his best friend. The emotional turmoil was further fuelled by cocaine, alcohol, and pressure from the record label to turn in a hit album.

The result was Rumours, one of the best and best-selling albums in rock history.

“Judas!”

In July of 1965 the “spokesperson for the generation” suddenly plugged in a guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, and Bob Dylan immediately went from folk hero to “Judas”, as one fan screamed at him a few months later in England. The controversy dogged Dylan on his next tour, audiences booing as he played loud and electric. Yet that era gave us “Like A Rolling Stone”, arguably the greatest song in rock music history.

Find Inspiration In The Chaos

How will you respond when the times are tough? Will you find inspiration in the chaos and turn in your best album ever, or will you let the roadblocks become your excuse for mediocrity? Will the people who doubt you and call you names win, or will you find strength in the adversity and create your masterpiece?

Order Brand Like  A Rock Star right now and have the paperback delivered or start reading the digital version right away.

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We spend much time and energy trying to organize our crazy lives.

We look for our happy place.

We search for Zen.

Yet most of the time, it eludes us. Life is never perfect. There are always those variables beyond our control that mess things up. There is always chaos.

Instead of fighting the forces against you, maybe you should embrace the chaos.

One of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll albums ever was created amidst a ridiculous amount of chaos.

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album is one of the rock era’s best (and best-selling) albums, with over 40 million copies sold. It spawned hits like “Don’t Stop”, “Go Your Own Way”, “You Make Lovin’ Fun”, and “Dreams”. It not only won a Grammy award, but it also won a place in the music collection of a generation.

But at the time of the recording, the marriage of John and Christine MacVie was falling apart. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were also breaking up, constantly fighting, and stopping only to work on songs. Drummer Mick Fleetwood wasn’t immune. His wife Jenny had an affair with his best friend, and their marriage was in serious trouble. Aside from personal strife – or maybe as a by-product of dealing with it – most of the band was heavily addicted to drugs at the time.  The only constant in the studio was a steady supply of cocaine and booze.

So how, from such insanity, did one of the greatest albums of all-time emerge?

Stevie Nicks said that the band made their best music when they were in the worst shape. Buckingham acknowledged that the tensions between the band members led them to create a sum greater than its parts.

Chaos inspired some of the greatest music ever made.

There are only so many variables in business and life that you have control over. The rest is beyond your control, and the odds are that much of it is chaotic.

Change the things you can. Then embrace the chaos.

Suppliers will let you down.

Deliveries will be late.

The artwork won’t look right.

Your flight will be late.

Someone valuable will quit.

There will always be chaos. Let it inspire you to create your own best-selling album.

Order your paperback or Kindle version of Brand Like A Rock Star now and start learning how the experiences of rock’s legends can help make your business more profitable and successful.

The image above is by Hugh MacLeod. He has a brilliant ability to capture complex thoughts in simple cartoons. You can enjoy and purchase his work at www.gapingvoid.com. I can’t say enough good stuff about his art.

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Musicians are a lot like entrepreneurs.

Sounds crazy at first.  How can you be an artist and a business person at the same time? Aren’t these things mutually exclusive?  Aren’t “suits” only good for selling, not creating?

The musician rock star and the entrepreneur rock star have three things in common.

Creating Something From Nothing

Both musicians and entrepreneurs create something from nothing.  Musicians sit down at a piano or guitar and they scribble lyrics on cocktail napkins and eventually create a song that we all sing along to.  Entrepreneurs begin with concepts, inventions, and ideas and eventually create products we all want to be part of.

Seldom Finish Where They Started

Both musicians and entrepreneurs seldom finish with the same product they started with.  “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac was a song that was the result of several different songs coming together in bits and pieces.  In fact, Fleetwood Mac is a great example of a band that ended up in a very different place from where they began.  Their roots as a British blues band are far removed from their status as one of America’s legendary pop bands. 
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs similarly end up in a different place from where they began.   Google began as a search engine based on the relationships between websites and ended up (at this point) as the internet’s leading advertising companies.  Richard Branson started a magazine, then a record store, and eventually an airline.  Those big bold Virgin Airways 747′s are a long way from his business starting point in 1966.  Richard Branson didn’t start the Virgin brand we know today, he navigated there.

No Two Are Alike

Even the best U2 cover band doesn’t sound quite like U2.  That’s because we all sing in our own unique voice.  The most unique voices, like Bob Dylan, are often the ones most heard.  Bands that sound too much like other bands seldom endure.  The Beatles were unique.  How many bands were tagged as “the next Beatles” only to fade away into obscurity?
Likewise, no two business legends are the same.  What made Bill Gates rich is very different from what made Richard Branson wealthy.  Gates’ nerdiness contrasts dramatically with Branson’s swagger.  Each would likely make very different decisions when confronted with the same set of circumstances, yet both of them became incredibly successful by taking their own path.

Great bands and great business people are always ready to navigate somewhere other than the destination they originally had in mind.  They are open to new ideas, tastes, discoveries, and eras.  They also seem to know intuitively when the time is right to abandon one idea and move on to a new one.

The starving artist has a lot in common with the starving start-up owner, just as the million-selling rock star has plenty in common with the business tycoon.

If you are passionate about music and business, get Brand Like A Rock Star updates by email.

After nearly 40 years, it may be the end of the road for Aerosmith.

Reports surfaced over the weekend the band is planning to meet, without lead singer Steven Tyler, to discuss their future.  Tyler was injured when he fell off the stage in Sturgis, ND last summer and the band was forced to cancel their world tour.  There are conflicting reports that the singer has also fallen off the sobriety wagon. Drugs and alcohol addiction nearly tore the band apart in the early 80′s.

As for Steven Tyler, he told Classic Rock Magazine that he doesn’t know exactly what he’ll be doing next, “but it’s definitely going to be something Steven Tyler, working on the brand of myself — Brand Tyler.”

My guess is that, assuming sobriety, ”Brand Tyler” has potential.  He’s been the voice and face of the band for nearly four decades.  He could quite possibly reinvent himself as a solo act and be successful.  Lead singers have a long history of successful solo careers.  It isn’t beyond comprehension to envision Steven Tyler putting together a string of movie soundtrack hits in the vein of ”Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” for years to come.

Brand “Aerosmith” on the other hand, has to be worried.  Without Steven Tyler, the band would be better off calling it quits and moving on to other projects.  They should be smart enough to know this, although guitarist Brad Whitford left the door open to finding a new lead singer.  He noted that Steven Tyler “leaves big shoes to fill but, if somebody was willing to do it and the chemistry was right, why not?”

Why not?  Because Brand Aerosmith is too valuable to damage with a new lead singer.  Get a new lead singer, and became a parody of yourselves.  Break up now, and leave with your dignity.  And keep the door opening for a multi-million dollar reunion tour when you eventually bury the hatchet.

Brand Fleetwood Mac, without Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks?  Didn’t do so well.  But they just completed the above-noted multi-million dollar reunion tour with Lindsey and Stevie in top form.

Brand CCR, without John Fogerty?  Not even close to the real thing.

Brand Guess Who, without Burton Cummings?  A scam every time they take to the stage.  These guys should be ashamed, almost as much as Creedence Clearwater Revisited.

Even the kings of the revolving lead singer routine, Van Halen, eventually learned the hard way. After Sammy Hagar successfully replaced David Lee Roth, the next two guys, Mitch Malloy and Gary Cherone, failed miserably.

The lesson: you just can’t easily change people’s perceptions.  Once they’ve given you a spot in their brain, you are stuck there for better or for worse.  You might as well ride it.

You can’t deny the expectations of your customers and expect them to keep buying your brand.  When you stand for something – when you own a piece of their mental real estate – you either honor that or you quit.  It is Ries and Trout 101.

Success comes from living up to expectations and delivering on the promises your brand makes.  There is no job harder or more painful in marketing and branding than trying to change minds.  In the case of Aerosmith, they would be smarter not to even try.

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UPDATED APRIL 8, 2011 – U2 is about to break all records. When they play Sunday night in Brazil, their “360 Tour” will become the most profitabl tour ever, eclipsing The Rolling Stones. The band will have earned $558 million by that point, and estimates say the tour will gross over $700 million by the time it wraps up in August on Canada’s Atlantic coast. This post goes back to 2009 when U2 was promoting their new album. I suggested they were wasting their time releasing new music, and that their brand would be better protected if they stopped making new music and focused entirely on touring and playing their hits.

My post the other day about U2 generated a lot of feedback, most of it critical and most of it sent directly to my email box.

“You are a moron”

“What a stupid post”

“F**k you”

It certainly generated reaction.

My basic premise was that, as a brand and a business, U2 should stop making new music because the bulk of their fans come to hear the classics, and each new album that doesn’t live up to “The Joshua Tree” simply dillutes the U2 legacy.

Everyone who commented or e-mailed me used U2′s incredible ability to draw fans to concerts as evidence that they should continue to make new music.

I agree that U2 is a great concert draw, and they should continue to tour! I’m not suggesting that U2 retire. My point is that most fans – aside from the hard core – come to hear the classic U2 hits.

Same with AC/DC. Their last album “Black Ice” went #1 in 18 countries. It spawned a #1 rock hit in “Rock ‘n Roll Train”. Yet when I saw AC/DC this summer, when the bathroom line-ups get long? It wasn’t during “You Shook Me All Night Long”, “Thunderstruck”, or “Hell’s Bells”. People went to the bathroom when they played songs from the new album, with the exception of “Rock ‘n Roll Train” which opened the show. The crowd thinned a lot during “Big Jack” and “War Machine”.

The Rolling Stones? Same story. I saw them in Boston on the “Bigger Bang” tour in 2005, and a lot more people were lined up at the Garden bathroom during “Rough Justice” than “Honky Tonk Women”, “Satisfaction”, and “Start Me Up”. Great show, but if you had to miss a song or two to answer biology’s calling, it was going to be during one of the new songs.

How about Fleetwood Mac? I caught their “Unleashed” show at Mohegan Sun in March of ’09. During this greatest-hits style tour, bathroom and beer breaks were hard to find because they didn’t play any new material. There was no visible exodus, except possibly during lesser-known songs like “I Know I’m Not Wrong” and “Storms”. But a few years earlier I saw the band tour in support of their last album, many in the crowd took a pee break during “Peacemaker” and “Say You Will”.

Maybe suggesting these classic bands should completely giving up on making new music isn’t a fair statement. Music is an art and artists shouldn’t stop creating just because people aren’t buying paintings like they used to.

But speaking purely from a business perspective, it is an undeniable fact that the more you water down your brand’s legacy, the bigger risk you have of making your brand irrelevant.

To tie this back to business and branding, it is vital to know why your fans showed up. You need to understand what they expect of you so that you can live up to those expectations. That’s how rock star brands are built.

If U2, AC/DC, and Fleetwood Mac fans spend $100 each to hear the hits, does it make any sense for the band to waste time introducing new songs?

If you are passionate about music and business, get Brand Like A Rock Star updates by email.

In the 70′s his band was notorious for consuming all kinds of mind-altering chemicals.

Today, as a refined 61 year-old British gentleman, Mick Fleetwood is now promoting a more dignified substance than fine white powder… fine white (and red) wine.

You can take your pick of wine’s from Mick’s “private cellar” and enjoy a Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, or Pinot Noir. The bottles are available on-line here.

Mick Fleetwood obviously knows his audience well. Thirty-two years ago, when “Rumours” was on top of the charts for the entire year and Mac was playing for 60,000 fans a night, wine would have been the last substance Fleetwood Mac fans would consider consuming. But today the average Fleetwood Mac fan likely uncorks a bottle of wine or two regularly. And they are at an age and stage-of-life where paying $30 for a bottle is no problem, and ordering it on the internet isn’t threatening.

Times change, and audiences and their tastes mature with them. Mick Fleetwood is smart to recognize this and tap into it using his personal brand.

But just because the Fleetwood Mac audience has aged into their 40′s and 50′s doesn’t make the brand extension into wine a great idea. It works because leap from between Fleetwood Mac’s brand values and wine isn’t a long stretch. In my experience, “Dreams” goes well with a Merlot. “Second Hand News” is complimented by a Cabernet Sauvignon. And “Go Your Own Way” is best suited to a Pinot Noir.

Remeber that Van Halen came out around the same time, and I can’t see David Lee Roth promoting a line of wines. Even Deep Purple would have a hard time attaching their name to a deep purple grape drink.

There needs to be a reasonable congruency between the two products for this to be effective.

And who knows, maybe in another 20 years the Mick Fleetwood name will appear on a line of signature motorized wheelchairs.

The branding lesson from Mick Fleetwood’s “Private Cellar” wine collection:

* Research your audience and follow them as their tastes change. While some tastes stay the same, it is easy to fall out-of-touch in today’s fast-moving environment.

* If a product is congruent with your brand, don’t be afraid to put your name on it. But be careful of extending your name too far and attaching it to something that doesn’t reflect your brand values.

If you are passionate about music and business, get Brand Like A Rock Star updates by email.

Thirty two years ago, amidst break-ups and drug problems, Fleetwood Mac recorded “Rumours”. In the years since, the band has resembled a soap opera as they have gone through line-up changes, retirements, reunitings, rehab, and firings.

After seeing Fleetwood Mac last weekend at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, it’s clear that the members of the band have finally realized that the true magic happens when each players truly knows, accepts, and thrives in their role.

Lindsay Buckingham is electric with energy. He is a guitar hero. He clearly plays the role of front man and savors every minute of it. He deserves to be front and center.

Stevie Nicks plays, even at 60, a sexy mystical role. Her songs counter Buckingham’s over-the-top energy and bring the band back to earth, and often deep inside it.

John McVie stands in the shadows, often perfectly still except for his fingers on the bass guitar. His trademark hat and vest give him away even from a distance. He is stoic and solid… everything a rhythm section should be.

Mick Fleetwood is hidden behind a massive drum kit, yet emerges as the de facto band leader for reasons beyond his name. Mick peers out from under the cymbals, his maniacal facial expressions communicating the pure passion with which he plays.

Despite being the front man, Lindsay Buckingham gave the job of introducing the band to Mick Fleetwood, who stood up and spoke for the first time. He refered to Buckingham as “his partner in Fleetwood Mac”, and shone the spotlight back on the guitarist.

Such distinct personalities… such diverse roles… yet such cohesive results.

That’s what happens when great players understand their differences, and use them to create something bigger than their individual parts.

Think about great teams, partnerships, or TV shows. How different were Abbot and Costello? Fred and Barney? Sports teams have players who seldom (or never) score points, yet play a critical role in the success of the team. If scoring points were the only measure of success, Martin Brodeur wouldn’t be heading to the Hockey Hall of Fame. And the Cy Young Award wouldn’t be the most-talked about invidual honor in baseball.

Know what makes you unique.

Know what makes others unique.

Carefully use those differences to create something incredible.

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