Business Leaders, Topic

What can business leaders learn from rock and roll? It’s a question that appears simple, yet it proved to be extraordinarily complex. The answer started as one that was entertaining (to us, and we hope to you), yet it yielded highly educational principles. The topic was conceptually intriguing, yet verbally challenging. These polarities of a seemingly contradictory paradigm excited us as we began talking to friends, professors, and business leaders ranging from frontline salespeople to CEOs about the Brands That Rock concept. Most nodded with gestures of increasing understanding as they began to grasp the power of the paradigm, with many adding the question, “But where did you get the idea for the article?” It happened during a five mile run on a hot summer afternoon in 2001. A DJ from a local rock station announced, with surprise in his voice, that the Aerosmith Just Push Play concert scheduled for a local amphitheater later that summer had sold out. His comments focused on why a group of fifty something guys, who had been playing together almost 30 years, could not only continue to fill venues but continue to produce hit rock songs that appealed to young consumers as much as to aging baby boomers like themselves.

The DJ’s question was intriguing, and we took it a few steps further to make it our absorbing hypotheses for research. Why do some bands and musicians stand the test of time, producing hits decade after decade, while others are doomed to one hit wonder infamy? What does it take to become a part of fans’ life soundtracks and a part of American culture? What are the parallels in business? It wasn’t long before we began to develop a model that could help firms win fans for their products and improve profits for their stakeholders. We saw the process as one of customers migrating to viii | acknowledgments become loyal customers and eventually to become fans, producing brand equity, a topic we had addressed together while writing an op ed piece for the annual report of Wendy’s several years earlier.