Around age twelve,  I started to shift my heroes from sports figures like Tom Seaver, Joe Namath, and Sandy Koufax to the anti-establishment, musical genius Frank Zappa.  I think observing Zappa was my first conscious awareness of marketing and the notion of differentiation. Zappa thumbed his nose at everyone AND was a hilarious musician who made me happy.

I knew Frank was doing something different, and he tapped into my need for irreverence and an anti-establishment view that was becoming hip in 1966 leading up to the radical, craziness of 1969.

 I could always depend on Zappa to follow the unbeaten path. He helped me to understand how and why different mattered so much. I never saw him as a publicity seeker- instead, he was following his inner Zappa, an authentic artist who didn’t give a damn about conventional thinking.

When I was in college at Penn in 1972, I got to photograph Zappa live on stage at Irvine Auditorium as he regaled the audience with irreverence coupled with sarcastic humor. It was a thrilling experience to be behind the scenes watching him perform as I got to wander backstage with Nikon in hand, taking pictures for The Daily Pennsylvanian and the school’s yearbook.

If you could have bottled Zappa’s energy at that performance, you could have lit up Philadelphia and the suburbs.  

But like a thread running through the tapestry of my education, Zappa taught me some important things about branding, marketing, and communications.  

Strictly Commercial and Avante-Garde

As a kid, Zappa’s father worked for the military-industrial complex involved in chemical gases. Themes around germs, warfare, and the like were ever-present in his music. His father worked with mustard gas, and I have read that they kept gas masks in his home. Some of Zappa’s childhood illnesses appear to be related to living so close to the manufacturing factory. I am confident this has something to do with how he viewed the world and lived each day. He wasn’t just against the norm, but he delighted in the way a creative spirit could shine a light and provide direction for a life’s journey. 

I learned the word Avante-Garde by listening to Zappa as names like Edgar Varese, Igor Stravinsky, and the doo-wop bands shaped his music vision. Growing up in LA and with his diverse background, Zappa rejected all things mainstream in music and politics, as he would quote from the Mad Men era Jello jingles or other commercials of the day. He made fun of everything and everyone.  

Watching him perform and listen to his albums was like seeing inside the mind of a joyful child who never left the playground except to tell his parents to piss off. I guess I saw in Zappa a misbehaving child- something I wasn’t but perhaps aspired to become.

His music was like nothing I had known. Discordant. Odd. Complex. Original.

How he lived in the world was so idiosyncratic and odd that it amused me beyond words. His music was always challenging to categorize, which was a clue to his marketing genius. He didn’t want to be seen in anyone else’s mold or style and flatly rejected all categorization of his work.  

As a self-taught composer, musician, and persona, it was always near impossible to describe him. His first album, Freak Out! with The Mothers of Invention, was both rock and roll, improvisation, jazz-like, and a collection of sounds that interested him from the audio panels.

To call him an iconoclast is an injustice to his spirit as labels never fit.

He was just Zappa.

Frank Marketing Lessons

So how does all this fit with marketing? Five themes emerge as I think about how Zappa was like a guide to the marketer arising from within.

Be Real

Let whatever is inside of you out and be proud of how you can uniquely create something of beauty and value, which delights a small tribe. Don’t worry about putting it into a box. Just open your mouth and scream, yell or sing it out loud. Being an authentic human and true to yourself can attract others who want to join your tribe. (company, brand, club, team, group, community, etc.)

Be Fresh 

Don’t be the same as everyone else clamoring for attention. If the world is zigging, don’t just zag but fly somewhere above the rest—wiggle when everyone marches straight forward. Make sounds with your hands when it is time to be serious. Zappa’s willingness to experiment and test things that others feared was his superpower.

Be Inventive

Let go of judgment. The question isn’t whether it is good or will anyone like it or will it succeed. The question is are you being truthful to your worldview. Enjoy the sheer pleasure of the creation process and realize that your time on earth is so short that fear is just a bug on a windshield as you fly down life’s highway. I’ll bet Steve Jobs had Zappa as a soundtrack in his life. Sadly Zappa died at age 53 but left a treasure trove of experimentations, inventions, and creative threads.

Be Bold

Experiment, blend, synthesize, try, and fail and try and fail and fail and fail and fail until you cry. But don’t just fall into lockstep with everyone else. Be proud of saying that you tried something novel. Go out on a few limbs, break a few bones, and get up. Zappa was bold, loud, and proud.

Be Exuberant

Celebrate the joy of light, sound, movement, words, and humor. Of all the lessons about marketing that I channeled from Zappa, the key was to celebrate and delight in the sheer joy of ideas and daily life. Find a voice that allows you to express the brilliance of your own life. Amplify happiness in your weird way without concerns for critics, judges, or anyone’s opinion. Live life with joy and exuberance.

 Zappa was an ever-present hero of mine as I grew up in suburban New Jersey and Philadelphia during college and beyond. It was as if he gave me and my friends Jamie and Larry permission to express our creative selves through many forms.

But it was always in the anti-establishment and irreverent way of being that helped spark my creativity in business and life. Sort of a worldview urging me to find my unique voice and approach. Today I use the phrase counterintuitive to talk about how I help businesses as a marketing strategist.

Zappa would hate that I was inspired by him to become a marketer. And I’m cool with that.  But truth be told, to this very day, I still watch out where the huskies go and don’t eat the yellow snow.

 Thanks, Frank.

You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.