What are you doing to elevate your business into a brand that rocks? Click here and order Brand Like A Rock Star now and start creating a rock star brand, putting the core marketing strategies of rock ‘n’ roll legends to work for your business and your personal brand.

Think your industry changes fast?

Picture yourself as Kip Winger (above), leader of band Winger. It is early 1991. You’ve just come off a 13-month tour in which you played sold-out stadiums around the world with bands like KISS, The Scorpions, and ZZ Top. You’ve watched your hit songs get played to death on MTV. And you’ve been nominated as “Best Heavy Metal Group” at the American Music Awards. Pretty cool.

And then, without warning, along comes Nevermind. And the bottom falls out.

The debut album from Nirvana in September of 1991 was the breakthrough album of the grunge era, and seemingly overnight Winger’s forte – big hair, leather, slick guitar solos, polished production, and rousing choruses about sex and girls – went dramatically out of style.

Winger didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Neither did Poison, Extreme, Warrant, or Skid Row. It just happened.

With the rapid rise of grunge music and its emotionally draining angst, distorted guitars, and low key visuals, all of the so-called hair bands became immediately passe.

Rock ‘n’ roll is a world of perpetual change.

Songs end and new ones begin. Tours go city to city, different shows each night. Albums rise and fall down the chart. Nothing is constant.

You either adapt or die, in business as in rock ‘n’ roll.

The hair bands, for the most part, died. Some tried to alter their sound, but even Guns N Roses and Van Halen fell apart within a few years.

Here are four lessons you can learn from the hair bands and their early 90s demise:

1. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do. If you are great at hair band rock, and hair band rock goes out of style, you can’t easily become a grunge act. The perceptions of you are realities. Changing minds is nearly impossible.

2. Even when you aren’t in style, your fans didn’t just disappear. There are still people out there who want to hear your songs! So entertain them. Forget about past success and focus on making your customers happy. Even when the tide turned against gas-guzzling SUVs, there were still customers who wanted to buy a Navigator instead of a Prius.

3. Wait it out. If you can afford to wait out the fads, you might just come back into style. This summer KISS and Motley Crue are on tour together. Many of the big hair bands of the 1980s are still playing for fans and making a great living doing it. Even though the hair band isn’t today’s big thing, it is not nearly as uncool as it was in 1991.

4. Popularity and talent are not related. When his band faded from popularity, Kip Winger studied classical music. He worked on solo projects. And he wrote a 30 minute symphonic piece that because the musical centerpiece for the San Francisco Ballet’s hit production of “Ghosts”. Without the trappings of immense fame, Kip Winger found immense freedom.

Rock on!

If you’re passionate about great bands and great brands, please click here to subscribe to Brand Like A Rock Star by email. You can also join the discussion on Facebook.

Rumor is that Taylor Swift, famous for writing songs about her personal relationships and experiences, has written a song about Kanye West and she plans to sing it at the MTV Music Awards tonight.

You probably remember last year, when Kanye stormed the stage after Taylor win the Best Female Video award.  Kanye grabbed the microphone from a stunned Swift and said that the award should have gone to Beyonce.  In the ensuring days and weeks, West felt an extreme backlash and disappeared from the spotlight.

Taylor Swift, meanwhile, has continued her meteoric rise and recently released the first single from her new album.  That song, “Mine”, is already a major hit on the pop and country charts.

Swift has endeared herself to fans through honest songs that are close to her heart.  She’s openly joked that it is hard to find people to date her because of her reputation for writing songs about her heartbreaks.

Brands that connect on a personal level always win.

When I ordered my last iPod through the Apple website, I had a quote from John Lennon engraved on the back.  It was a quote I chose, and the engraving was free.  There is no iPod quite like that one anywhere on earth.  Today my iPhone has a selection of apps that are personal to me.  My friends and coworkers have a different selection of apps, all personal to them.

Many sports manufacturers allow you to personalize your gear, creating equipment in your team colors or your personal favorite colors.  There will be no equipment exactly like yours anywhere.

Through social media sites you can now create an internet experience that is personal to you.  You can wake up to an on-line newspaper that is customized to your personal tastes, interests, and sources.

Smart brands today are like Taylor Swift.  They engage their fans on a personal level.  They communicate in connective language, not transactional words.  By revealing themselves to the world on a human level, they give us the chance to bond with them.  After all, people don’t bond with products or companies.  We bond with other people. 

If you expect your brand to connect with people, you need to find a way to make it human.

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

If you’re passionate about great bands and great brands, please click here to subscribe to Brand Like A Rock Star by email. You can also join the discussion on Facebook.

You wouldn’t have caught me dead wearing Old Spice when I was coming of age in the 1980′s.  Old Spice was, first of all, “old” simply by name.  Dad wore it.  Today, every cool kid is wearing it.

Likewise with Johnny Cash.  Dad listened to the “man in black”, but nobody was playing his music on their Sony Walkman.  Today, the late Johnny Cash is permanently cool and genuinely missed.

Few musical acts have made a comeback as astonishing and deserving as the one Johnny Cash mounted in the five years before his death. He went from being a forgotten-about archive from the Hall of Fame into a six-time nominee at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Few brands have staged a comeback as noteworthy as Old Spice.  It went from being a low-value brand from the past into one of the world’s leading men’s grooming products in an exceptionally short period of time.

Why do some brands fade away and others come roaring back?  What do the successful bands and brands that come back to life have in common?

1. Change Your Message

Old Spice changed their marketing message.  They brilliantly adapted their message to the self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek tone of today’s youth.  Their commercials began to spread virally on the internet spawning websites dedicated entirely to Old Spice commercials.

Johnny Cash changed his message too.  Instead of recording country or gospel songs, he recorded songs originally by hard rock bands like Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, U2, Tom Petty, and Danzig.  His series of American Recordings also included his own songs, but the albums focused on speaking the language of the youth of the day.

2. Change Your Partner

Old Spice collaborated with advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy to create advertising that was edgy and in touch with young consumers.  Wieden and Kennedy is best known for their work with Nike, and they’ve also developed many cutting-edge campaigns for Coke, ESPN, and Miller beer.

Johnny Cash collaborated with Rick Rubin to create music that was edgy and in touch with young consumers.  Rick Rubin is a producer famous for starting Def Jam records and working with performers like Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Metallica.

3. Don’t Give Up

Rebuilding a damaged for forgotten brand is not a quick fix.

Old Spice began their turnaround om 1990 when it was purchased by Proctor and Gamble.  In 1992 they updated the logo and color scheme.  Over the next 15 years they released body washes, body sprays, deoderant sticks, and shaving products. When the new Old Spice became popular, they rereleased the original blend with the slogan “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.”

Johnny Cash began working with Rick Rubin in 1994, and won a Grammy for Best Folk Album for “American Recordings”.   It met with plenty of critical acclaim, but it was the subsequent volumes, particular volume IV of the series, that truly cemented Cash as a contemporary icon.  His 2003 version of Nine Inch Nails “Hurt” remains a cross-generational classic.

Here are two videos that illustrate the brands post-turnaround.  The very emotional “Hurt” by Johnny Cash can be viewed here.  Below is the phenomenal “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” from Old Spice.

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

First of all, thanks for reading. If you like what you read here, it would be very cool of you to consider subscribing to Brand Like A Rock Star by Email.  And please share the site with friends and colleagues!

John Mayer has gotten more press in the past week than he has in years after making racially insensitive remarks in an interview in Playboy magazine.

He’s developed quite a reputation as a womanizer over the years, and he added to that perception by referring to ex-girlfriend Jessica Simpson as “crack cocaine”, talking longingly about his other high-profile ex, Jennifer Anniston, and publicly declaring his love for pornography.

John Mayer’s brand has a strange gap in it.

John Mayer plays what many people consider “wimpy” music.  His songs are more likely to be heard on the “soft ‘n easy” radio station than the local hit music station.  Hearing John Mayer next to Phil Collins, Celine Dion, and “Circle of Life” era Elton John is not the least bit unusual.

Yet John Mayer’s look and his words work against that image.

His most recent song, “Who Says”, includes the lyric “who says I can’t get stoned?”.   That might account for why it hasn’t been played much on the radio next to Celine and Phil.

His look, with a full sleeve tattoo, doesn’t fit with those artists.

And the comments he made to Playboy further distance himself from the pack.

Does John Mayer intentionally record soft music, yet put forward a rough image, in order keep credibility with a young and hip audience?  Click here to see how youth-focused news outlet MTV is handling the story.  The MTV angle is that an outspoken musician is better than a formulaic edgeless one.  Rolling Stone’s Caryn Ganz said “it’s better to have a rock star who isn’t afraid to open his mouth.”  Ganz went on to tell MTV that “he hasn’t converted me, but he has almost certainly convinced people to buy his albums based on his ability to speak his mind.”

Could John Mayer’s behavior be a calculated PR move?

It would be a bold and difficult juggling act to maintain.  But it is possible that his actions are a conscious effort to remain relevant to a young audience while keeping his musical appeal with older, more conservative, fans.

Still, a non-congruent strategy like that seldom works.

Rock star brands are almost universally true to their image across all of the senses.

For example, you won’t find a topless pool on your Disney Cruise.  It doesn’t go with the Disney brand. You’ll have to go on a Celebrity Cruise for that privilege.

Try buying a Porsche mini-van.  It won’t happen, because a mini-van just doesn’t go with the Porsche brand.  Even their Cayenne SUV stretches the limit of the Porsche brand!

If John Mayer is carefully trying to balance both ends of the spectrum, good luck to him.  Very few brands have successfully accomplished it long term.

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