Violin acknowledges Valley's hippy roots with Grateful Dead gig lottery

On the road today, I saw a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac

In a move calculated to appeal to the aging hippies who now run Silicon Valley, Violin is entering readers of its marketing white paper-type docs into a Grateful Dead concert ticket sweepstake.

Marketing head Amy Love said that with "the directional relevance of being 'Grateful that Disk is Dead', we are enabling our customers, prospects, channel partners and sales representatives the opportunity to join us to see the Grateful Dead in concert in Silicon Valley in late June".

"The Dead fan base has migrated to an audience base that works for IT professionals and the concerts themselves are garnering a lot of mainstream press attention," she added.

Violin's aim is to tap into this "in a way that brings a unique experience together for customers, prospects, channel members and our reps".

A survey of the Grateful Dead fanbase found that "the Grateful Dead’s most ardent fans make more than $100,000 annually [and] the Grateful Dead fan base consists of the wealthiest among us [being] bourgeois bohemians, or BoBos".

The group is staging a "Fare Thee Well” concert in Santa Clara, California, on 27 June this year, and Violin will stump up airfares, accommodation and concert tickets to grand prize lottery winners. There are several lesser prizes as well.

So, BoBo Dead Heads, visitors to Violin's website will receive one entry to the giveaway for each thought leadership* resource they download. Visitors can return to the site each week to download a new resource piece and earn an additional entry.

Details can be found here. Separate giveaways will be available for Violin channel partners and sales professionals to win and they can check them out at Violin's partner portal, or talk to their channel account manager. ®

* Staffed entirely by thought-followers with the attention span of hyperactive goldfish, The Reg is eager to hear from thought leaders. Send your thoughts as comments to this article so the world and his/her dog, cat and goldfish can understand what we are missing. Tell us the name of the most apposite Grateful Dead track for flash array buffs.