I used to think that listening to Kiss was one if my guilty pleasures. I probably own 15 Kiss albums. Then, I found out that my 54-year-old father-in-law was also a fan, so I guess there's some kind of cross-generational appeal.

So, these four dudes ran the most colossal marketing/rock'n'roll juggernauts of the last 50 years - there's no doubt in my mind that when Alie and I are sitting on the sunporch of the Oakland Senior Center in 2050 that some anthropologist is going to rip open a 1976 time capsule and pull out a copy of Kiss Alive! (It's also a safe bet that Alie will still think they suck in 2050, but I digress...)

Since most of this blog's readers are striving, if not to make their brands Kiss-cool, at least, to make them Kiss-popular. And just because your brand has a business face on it (SuccessFactors, Hertz, etc.) doesn't mean it can't have raving fans. So, without further ado, here's what I learned from Kiss.

1. Learn when to take off the makeup. In 1983, ten years into their career, Kiss knew when their fans had outgrown the greasepaint schtick. If your brand can't break out of the mold and talk in a two-way conversation with passion, then, don't engage. It's not like you've got to be 100% transparent about your company's every next move; you've just got to contribute to the conversation. When Kiss took off their makeup, they were doing so because they thought it made them relevant as a rock/metal band, in the context of the marketplace at the time. And it did.
   
2. A brand is a brand, not a person. Don't talk like one. When Kiss tried to issue four simultaneous solo albums in 1978, it was the biggest flop of their careers, to that point. The fans recognized them as a group entity, not as a collection of individuals, in terms of their music. So, while it may work to blog as individuals in a multi-voiced blog, and to have multiple voices in the conversation all coming from your brand, blogging does not make your brand a person.
3. Inspire the fantasy. There's a reason that musicians as diverse as Kurt Cobain and Garth Brooks were inspired by Kiss: that band put the fantasy of stardom within their reach (and they weren't the greatest musicians either). These guys were so freakin' passionate about what they did, and it showed. I think the two most influential groups of the 1970s were Kiss and the Velvet Underground - because they inspired so many thousands of other bands, not because they were the best. If your social media work doesn't inspire at least your current customers (let alone your prospective customers), then it's not working.
4. You don't have to give away the secret sauce, you just gotta show up for the conversation. One of the best moments of Kiss video is a very early Gene Simmons 1974 appearance on the Mike Douglas show, where aging comic Totie Fields called Simmons "a nice Jewish boy," stating that, "you can't hide the hook." Simmons coolly replied, "Wouldn't you like to know....," licking his lips. As long as you're taking part in the conversation (with other entities, and not just on your own blog), you're doing your part. But beware, there are going to be Totie Fieldses all over the place, saying whatever it is that they're gonna say. She ended up doing over a hundred appearances on the show before her untimely death in the late '70s.
5. Sometimes, what the fans like best is the roughest, most unpolished stuff. The most popular Kiss album of all time, in terms of individual sales: Kiss Alive! This is Kiss at their messiest, wildest and most unpolished. The initiatives that have been key in bringing customer engagement back to General Motors and customer service as a paragon of Dell's recent initiatives have revolved around blogging and two-way conversation. Granted, Dell's initiative started because Jeff Jarvis "caught them on a bad night," but that was all it took to inject them into the conversation. And that was all it took for Kiss, too.

Coming next week: social media, as taught by Ted Nugent.