3 Lessons Green Day Can Teach You About Loving Your Customers
Last summer I saw Green Day. Twice. Once in Chicago and once in Milwaukee.
Throughout my years of binging on punk rock shows, Green Day's performances always stick out. Time between shows didn't matter. It had been over a decade since I'd last seen them (the last time was 2010 in a giant field outside of Dublin...also memorable to say the least).
I knew I would not be disappointed.
Some bands put on live shows that are fun in the moment, but quickly forgettable. Green Day is not one of those bands. So when I was in the crowd this time - holding a beer in one hand, throwing up my rock hands with the other, and enthusiastically pogoing and singing along to every word of "Know Your Enemy" - I actually took pause to ask myself "What makes Green Day so different?"
I put down my rock hands, pulled out my phone, jotted down a few quick notes, and decided I'd come back to this later. Well, "later" is now today! So, looking at Green Day through the lens of customer-centricity (and consequently doing one of the most un-punk rock things I could possibly do), I present to you 3 business lessons Green Day can teach us:
1) Focus on your audience, not yourself
Green Day grew up playing in divey, intimate clubs in Oakland, CA and never forgot that crowd engagement makes a punk show what it is. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong embodies this ethos.
When I was watching them from the stands at Wrigley, the number of times and different ways they inserted “CHICAGO!! YOU F*$%ING ROCK!” into the first 3 songs of their set was gratuitous, but you know what, it worked.
Later in the set when Billie Joe introduced the rest of the band, he immediately shined the spotlight on everyone else. He quickly glossed over who he was before saying a bunch of nice things about drummer Tre Cool and nudging him into a drum solo. While Billie Joe is the most charismatic of the bunch, he uses that strength to make everyone else look bigger and better.
You can be one of the biggest rock bands of all time, but never let your biggest fans and teammates forget who got you there.
2) Lean in to your experience
Crowd engagement is an art. Queen's Freddie Mercury was a master at this with his call-and-response "Ay-Oh!'s" to massive stadium audiences. Billie Joe has clearly ripped a page from Mercury's book and continues to build on it. Throwing a quick "Ay-Oh! contest" between both sides of the crowd at Milwaukee's Marcus Amphitheater before declaring a winning (i.e. louder) side is a great take on this technique.
Even more impressive, they know how to pluck a fan out of the crowd, give them a guitar, tell them to play "When I Come Around," and make them the star of the show. From the collective to individual crowd experience, I've heard it said before that you go to see Green Day to "see how it's done."
A lucky fan joins Green Day on stage © Green Day
This type of rock n' roll swagger doesn't come overnight. Green Day started in 1987. They'd been a band for 7 years when their breakout hit Dookie was released in 1994. As they skyrocketed to fame, they continued to pull from all the ways they delighted small crowds at the beginning of their career.
With plenty of new ways to enhance customer experience - from CRM systems to dedicated Customer Success teams - it's still helpful to learn from and pull from classic techniques. Don't discount handwritten thank you notes or just telling a customer they kick ass and that they're really great to work with. As big as your company may be, there's still an opportunity for a personal touch.
3) Steal the show
The first time I saw Green Day was in 2002. They were co-headlining with Blink-182, but Green Day was playing first. Did they act like an opener? Absolutely not.
If anyone knows where to find this tour poster, I will pay a lot of money for it.
I would have hated to be Blink that night, because Green Day stole the show. Everything I just described to you went into that concert. From call-and-answers to bringing the crowd on stage, they demonstrated 15 years’ worth of rockstar swagger as they jettisoned through their hour-and-fifteen-minute set. After 20 years and a few hundred concerts later, that performance still lives rent-free in my brain.
So why did this set stick? Because Green Day went on stage and played to their strengths and their experience.
They weren't competing with Blink. They were just being the best version of Green Day they could be.
The same goes for your career. Don't worry about your competition. Focus on what you do that no one else does.
Put this in the context of a trade show or conference for example. Whether you’re presenting at an event, an exhibitor, or simply attending, it’s your job to be memorable. Maybe you build a presentation around impressive storytelling rather than features and benefits. Or maybe it's deciding not to invest in a booth, but to host an invite-only beer-and-food pairing dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel.
Decide to be the headliner, not the opener, regardless of when or where you’re slotted. When you do that, your audience and your customers will love you.
Thanks for reading. What bands have left an impression like this on you? What lessons - business-related or not - has rock and roll taught you? Have you seen Green Day before? Do you also believe that their album Nimrod - not Dookie - is the pinnacle of both their punk rock roots and pop sensibilities? ;-) I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Green Day, 2019 © Radio X