Parrot Heads and Building a Tribe
Jimmy Buffett was one of music’s richest stars and most powerful brands. His name is on the ever-growing chain of Margaritaville restaurants in North America and also and hotels, casinos, line of clothing, books, footwear and so much more. It’s all here — www.margaritaville.com
All this, just because of one single hit. A simple beach life song that fans have been singing along for decades — Margaritaville.
How did he make it this big?
All thanks to some of his very bright advisers and Parrot Heads.
Since early in his career, buffett had attracted and nurtured a community of fans who embraced his music and beach-bum lifestyle. Building a fan club was not unusual in those days. But things really took off when he gave his fans the control to drive his boat forward.
Timothy B Schmit, Buffett’s guitarist dubbed the growing number of Hawaiian Tshirts and flip flop wearing fans “Parrot Heads” adopting the term from the famous Grateful Dead fans, the Dead Heads
One particular fan named Scott Nickerson, decided to bring together some of the great people he had met at some of buffett’s tailgating parties. Since buffett played only once a year, this would give them another chance at to get together and talk all things tropical.
Nickerson found his little Parrot Head club growing quickly so he decided to bring the idea to Buffett himself and contacted his attorneys to make sure he wasn’t violating any trademarks and found in them a surprising ally.
Instead of trying to shut down Nickerson’s group, they helped him get it rolling.
After that there was no involvement from buffet or his lawyers. The fans did all the work. Nickerson wrote the official guidelines for Parrot Heads in Paradise Inc where people can go to start their own local Parrot Head Fan Club. He continues to work with the organization as they administer more that 200 official club toady.
How did “Building a Tribe” help buffett?
Fortunately Buffett saw an opportunity and embraced the idea of giving up some control over his brand to his fans. The involvement of his “Tribe” in his brand made it bigger than anything he could create himself.
It created a fantastic word of mouth sensation and fan-to-fan marketing facilitated an organic wildfire that spread the brand. It turned fans of band into a connected tribe.
According to Nickerson,
The passion among his fans had a lot to do with how different buffett is. While most artists sing songs about a wide variety of topics, buffett only sang about his beach-bum lifestyle.
Brand Consistency played a major role too. He was consistent at singing all the songs with the same theme which made his brand so much more powerful. It is vital again to iterate that the band did not actively do much to facilitate the growth of their fan base. In fact, he didn’t set out to build a fan club per se, but simply connected people to the band and to each other.
It’s what they didn’t do stands out as a lesson. By not getting in the way of their fans’ passion, Jimmy Buffett created massive networks of passionate people to help spread the message about their music. Was it risky? Of course, it was. But that’s the opportunity brands have today if they are willing to lose some control and let the fans take over.
Would you take such a risk?
Someone from your team manages your facebook profile now! What would happen if you turned the administration of your profile over to some of your biggest fans?
Do you think the message would change? Well, one thing is for sure. instead of corporate press releases, your wall would be full of real life comments about your brand and how it impacts the life of the people who use it. It could become a two way communication street. But would you do it? Sure it’s risky, but what smart moves doesn’t carry some risk?
Lessons Learnt
It may soon come to be that creating a customer-driven brand is impossible to avoid. You might either have to surrender some control or risk being obsolete. That’s because today's marketers are speaking to a generation raised on a personalized experience.
These consumer won’t settle for anything less than brands that are responsive to them. Allowing these new consumers to take some control over your brand will give them the chance to create a customized experience and deepen the bond between the brand and the customer.
