Four tie-dyed and true marketing lessons from The Grateful Dead

2) Choose memorable brand names. "Whatever you may think of it, The Grateful Dead is a name you remember. When you select an uncommon name — one appropriate to your company image and target market — it's unlikely consumers will confuse your product with something similar," Scott notes. "They will remember you. And in today's world of online communications and of search engines, unique names for your company, products and services allow you to own the search engine results for your brands."

3) Experiment! (Not with what you're thinking.) The Grateful Dead played more than 2,300 concerts and each was unique due to their improvisational style. They experimented with musical forms and genres to create unique musical experiences.

"Like The Grateful Dead, marketers today need to experiment in their craft in order to make big breakthroughs," Halligan says. "CEOs and management teams need to free their marketers to experiment, quickly learn from failure and experiment again. In terms of marketing, this could mean starting a blog, freeing your employees to Tweet or write posts for your blog, or leaving comments on others' blogs."

4) Lose control of your marketing messages. A Grateful Dead concert was about having fun, meeting friends, checking out great music, escaping the everyday and belonging.

"The Grateful Dead were willing to give up a large degree of control over how they were defined and instead hand it to their fans," Halligan explains. "While this approach is highly unusual, it is also often very successful. When organizations insist on operating in a command-and-control environment with mission statements, boilerplate descriptions, messaging processes and PR campaigns, their strategies can both hamper growth and backfire in execution."