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Best Marketed Bands


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The Misfits certainly seem more popular now due to their iconic logo.

 

That's a good one.  Everyone seems to know them now. I bought my wife a Misfits coffee mug from Guitar Center.  Our coffee cups are on a shelf in a glass-doored cabinet, and it's funny how many times plumbers and other workers we've hired have seen it and said "cool Misfits mug!"  :lol

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Marketing isn't just merch. To me, the best marketed bands are some of the boomer-classic rock acts who, after years and year of effort from their labels/PR/promoters/etc, get pushed into "legendary" status despite maybe only having one or two big albums like Fleetwood Mac. 

Fleetwood Mac is a weird example to draw... three (at least) distinct phases during their career, and one of the top selling records ever. 

 

for bands below at or below theater level, merch is their only way of marketing, really. you'll rarely hear them on radio or read about them in national print. i guess song placement works as marketing as well; Mogwai has had pretty good luck placing songs on tv shows and films.

 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1912841/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

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For a band that registers a negative number on the cultural richter scale, The Osmonds had their own TV show! - which then launched the Donny and Marie show. Short lived, but those two shows were popular in their day. 

 

I (rather, my older sisters) had at least one of their albums (Crazy Horses) when I was a kid. 

 

The Bay City Rollers were another one of those highly marketed and "successful" bands in the 70s. No lasting legacy to speak of, but they hit hard on the marketing to grab a piece of that pie. 

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Fleetwood Mac is a weird example to draw... three (at least) distinct phases during their career, and one of the top selling records ever. 

 

 

Today I learned that Neil Finn and Mike Campbell are currently members of Fleetwood Mac (and have been so since April 2018) - after Buckingham was fired again. 

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For a band that registers a negative number on the cultural richter scale, The Osmonds had their own TV show! - which then launched the Donny and Marie show. Short lived, but those two shows were popular in their day. 

 

I (rather, my older sisters) had at least one of their albums (Crazy Horses) when I was a kid. 

 

The Bay City Rollers were another one of those highly marketed and "successful" bands in the 70s. No lasting legacy to speak of, but they hit hard on the marketing to grab a piece of that pie. 

 

While looking through my old records, I still have my older sister's copy of the below. Still have not spun it, yet.

 

 

vintage-donny-osmond-superstar-album_1_8

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yeah i can't make heads or tails out of that personnel move. i guess Mick and John still control the band. must have been over money but i can't imagine any of the members aren't absolutely rolling in it.

 

I think Nicks gave them the whole 'it's me or Lindsey' ultimatum.

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which is the hipster and which is the sex symbol?

 

D6EfEqXUYAAB8PG.jpg44555953a671fde89ad7f4e442299faa.jpg

 

I would have narrowed those two down to freak and sex symbol...maybe interchangeably (although the title of sex symbol almost always goes to a blonde lead singer), with nerd being Bun E. and hipster being Rick Neilsen.

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Rick Nielsen couldn’t be a bigger nerd. He’s basically Pee Wee Herman with a five necked guitar.

 

Fair enough, but that means Bun E. has to be either the hipster, freak, or sex symbol.  Does he fit in any of those categories?

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 Mustache? skinny ties? smokes? Hipster for sure. 

 

Those are strong points.  Perhaps I'm thrown off by Rick Neilsen's bowtie.

 

Also, I work across the street from a college campus.  The brand of hipster we get around here is much more Nielsen than Carlos.

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After seeing KISS last night, I was thinking about bands that had great marketing. Not bands created specifically by marketing (boy bands, Spice Girls, etc.) but marketing that pushed bands to higher levels. Here are a few...

 

1) KISS, duh!

2) Grateful Dead

3) Rolling Stones (mostly from the iconic Warhol lips and tongue alone)

4) The Beatles, esp. in the moptop days

 

Hard to argue with any of those. Zeppelin's Swan Song logo has sold a gizllion shirts. Motorhead is wildly successful, given the fact that they didn't sell millions of records. AC/DC! The Phish logo is iconic - every Phish fan has multiple shirts.

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Bun E Carlos looks like the manager at a bar where they refer to the bartenders as "mixologists"

 

I would accept Nerd, Freak, or Hipster as correct answers for Nielsen and also for Carlos. 

 

I guess if I put them in their proper context...a band from the '70s...hipster makes more sense for Carlos than it does by today's standards.  In the '70s, people were probably still hanging onto what hipster meant in the '50s: White guys who like jazz and are somehow both overdressed and underdressed at the same time.  Hipster today could mean anything from Pee Wee Herman to Wolfman Jack.  So  feel Neilsen is more the hipster by today's standards.

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