T A B L E__T A L K Who pays off the debt that's brought into a marriage? Share your views on marital bliss and financial solvency in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk   Search for business, personal finance and more at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Epidemic of extravagance By Heather Chaplin Economist Robert H. Frank has written a painstakingly researched new book offering a cure to our destructive love of luxury, but will anybody listen? (02/19/98) Van Gogh Inc. By Larry Kanter You've seen the paintings. Now buy the lunch box (02/12/99) House flash By Heather Chaplin If you're struck with the biological urge to own a home, consider first whether it's a good time to buy (02/05/98) The Jordan Effect: What's race got to do with it? By Leon Wynter The colorblind world depicted by Madison Avenue isn't our racial reality yet -- but it's a step in the right direction (01/29/99) E-commerce: Don't believe the hype By Heather Chaplin Online shopping leaves me frustrated, bored and feeling like a schmo (01/22/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money feature archives		---Ladies and gentlemen, please ---welcome ... the Grateful Capitalists! ----- TAKING THEIR CUE FROM COUNTERCULTURE SUCCESS STORIES LIKE THE GRATEFUL DEAD, RADICAL MARKETERS ARE BUILDING BRAND LOYALTY FROM THE GROUND UP. RADICAL MARKETING | BY SAM HILL AND GLENN RIFKIN | HARPERBUSINESS | 277 PAGES BY LARRY KANTER | About 15 years ago, Sam Hill was sitting on the couch, watching television with an old college buddy. The friend was a follower of the Grateful Dead, and he began explaining the Dead lifestyle: the passion with which fans followed their heroes from city to city; the bazaar of Dead-oriented products that inevitably sprung up around arenas and stadiums when the band performed; and the ubiquitous logos -- the skull and roses, the dancing bear, the lightning bolt skull -- that Deadheads used to identify themselves. That's when Sam Hill had an epiphany. The Dead, it occurred to him, were more impressive as a brand than as a band. Operating far below the radar of corporate America, the group had somehow managed to cultivate a degree of consumer loyalty that product managers at marketing behemoths like Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble could scarcely fantasize about. Hill, it should be pointed out, is something of a Bigfoot on Madison Avenue. The former head of international strategy at Kraft General Foods, he later served as chief marketing officer at the global management consulting firm Booz-Allen & Hamilton. He has hawked everything from cars to liquor to credit cards to fertilizer for some of the world's largest companies in more than 30 countries and is as skilled in the dark arts of marketing as just about anyone. But throughout his career, his mind kept wandering back to the Dead. "They hadn't had any big hits, but they had built a successful business, without lots of hype, glitz or glamour. How did they do it?" he recalls wondering. Hill answers his own question in the new book "Radical Marketing" (HarperBusiness). Co-authored with veteran business journalist Glenn Rifkin, the volume describes how such oddball firms as Harley-Davidson Inc., pet food manufacturer Iams Co., Virgin Atlantic Airways, the National Basketball Association and, yes, the Grateful Dead are reinventing the game of marketing, leaving such traditional merchandising giants as McDonald's Corp. and Walt Disney Co. far behind in the race toward innovation. What Hill's "radical" marketers have in common is that each has been able to successfully market itself and build a brand name without shelling out the tens of millions of dollars on advertising and strategic brand management that traditional marketers routinely spend. And though Hill admits that he still kneels before the mighty marketing muscle of Procter & Gamble -- perhaps the most successful traditional marketer the world has ever seen -- he remains far more impressed with what his own cast of oddballs and underdogs has accomplished on a shoestring. "It's just like night and day," he says. "At one end you have this established, disciplined, almost mechanistic approach. And at the other end, you have this free-wheeling, ill-defined approach, that can be just as effective." Consider the Dead. Despite its ties with the Hells Angels and its members' occasional drug blackouts, the band has been a marketing juggernaut, if an inadvertent one, almost from the outset. It began keeping a database of fans in 1971, more than a decade before so-called relationship marketing became an industry staple. It toured incessantly and kept ticket prices low, encouraging fans to tape its concerts and distribute the recordings among one another. When people were discovered selling unauthorized merchandise, the band didn't shut them down, it brought them into the fold -- and began collecting a licensing fee. The payoff has been considerable. Grateful Dead Productions now markets more than 500 items, and the band and its licensees generated some $60 million in sales last year -- a tidy sum, considering that the group no longer even exists. N E X T+P A G E | Breaking through the conservatism and cynicism of traditional marketing