35 Years Without Elvis (And Why He’s So Popular Today)

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!!!

Welcome back to Graceland Ontario, your one stop blog for learning success lessons from the actions of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Today, we’re delaying the final Olympic Blog Post for one more week to talk about your enduring popularity. I hope you enjoy it!

So, if you’re a big Elvis fan, you probably know that on August 16^th 2012 Elvis Presley celebrated 35 years of no-Elvis. Yep, it was the anniversary of his death. Yet, a crowd still showed up at Graceland, they stilled played Elvis records on the radio, Elvis Presley Enterprises still made money. 35 years after his death, Elvis is still popular.

“Why?”

He’s got a brand; a set of distinctive attributes that can be uniquely associated with him.

“But he’s a person, a dead person. How can he have a brand?”

Well, it’s what he did while he was alive that made it possible −the songs, the looks, the pictures, they were all part of his image when he was alive, but they also gave him immortality. You see, as soon as he died, people could then use what he created in life to keep making money in the future.

He had the fashions that made him unique, the jumpsuits, the Tupelo Gold Suit. People recognized Elvis’s image, with the sideburns and slicked back hair, and it could be used to market him after death as well as in life.

So Elvis Presley Enterprises (E. P. E.) took control. Graceland became the base, the centre where Elvis fans could meet and reminisce. The products remained Elvis’s tracks and movies, which could be re-mastered and remixed as much as needed. Then there were the spin-off products; the books, the posters, the t-shirts and dolls, the licensing. Collecting royalties from all this made Elvis one of the highest paid dead-men in the world.

But that’s not good enough − the brand must be dynamic; it must move and change and twist and keep growing. Remember the old business adage? If you’re not growing, you’re dieing − and E.P. Enterprises knew that so they kept changing things, remodelling this and that, putting out new publicity campaigns, licensing new odds and dodds.

And what has it brought them? A successful business thriving thirty five years after the man who inspired it was discovered dead in his Graceland bathroom. It worked for Elvis and it can work for you.

The key is not to be boring. When you don’t grow, that’s predictable, that’s boring and that won’t make you any money. On the other hand, when you create an exciting brand, a cool brand, as Apple’s done, and keep growing even when the inspiration for the business has been dead for thirty five years, it keeps you on top of the tower.

So, what’s important for you? Get your brand going. Whether you know it or not, the way you show yourself, your business, the place you hold up, the stuff you create or sell is all part of that brand. Advertise that brand as E.P. Enterprises has and collect for the image you promote. Then, keep growing the brand. Don’t change everything but adding this and taking that away, improving this and innovating that keeps you growing. And as long as you’re growing, you won’t be dieing. That’s how Elvis did it.

So, thirty five years on, Elvis isn’t dead, not really. He’s a living, growing entity with a unique brand. And as long as that brand keeps growing, he’ll never die. He’ll be immortal.

Elvis’s Lessons:

Create a brand. A brand is a set of attributes (like a house, image, fashion, book, recordings, t-shirt, etc) that can be associated with you. Then, as Elvis’s estate did, change the brand slowly so that it keeps growing and never dies. When you have your brand - with its subtle changes over time - you will be moving towards Elvis’s current station, true immortality.

Creating a brand is like creating an image, it reflects who you are and what you stand for. For more on creating an image, check out what I say about it in this post.

P.S. This ’35 years without Elvis’ post happened to be my 35^th post, and not purposely − it makes you wonder…

P.P.S. Remember to leave a comment − I’d love to hear from you.

P.P.S. If you’d like to see a Youtube clip from Graceland this year, 35 years after Elvis’s death, here’s a news broadcast with Elvis's ex-wife and daughter, Priscilla and Lisa Marie, talking about Elvis's legacy.

Accept it How It Is

Most people, as you’re showing by reading this post, are interested in becoming widely successful individuals with great business, personal and spiritual lives, or at least something close to that. We want to be the best and get to the very top.

But like it or not, when you’re going to the top, you find yourself a long way from the ground so when you fall, you fall far.

Elvis is one of the most successful men in history; he broke records that stand over thirty years after his death, let alone when he set them. And he had a legion of adoring fans. At one time, he even had a perfect (seemingly anyways) family.

But when you’re at the top, you can fall a long way. His marriage broke up, his physical shape deteriorated. It must have distracted him because even his musical success was not what it had been.

What hurt Elvis more was not the event of, say, his marriage breaking up but how he reacted to that event and how that event then ate into other places in his life.

Man that sounds terrible! But it’s unavoidable, right?

Yes and no; The bad stuff will happen, but you don’t have to give up on life because of it. A way of staying positive when this happens in your own life is accepting an event how it is.

Robert Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral, put it wonderfully in one of his books about positive thinking. He said that if you look at life as an experiment, there can’t be bad or good. There can only be feedback. And the nice thing about feedback is you can learn from it for more successful trials in the future.

When something bad happens to me, I have a little breathing technique I do to get over it.

You want to know what it is?

Alright, let’s do it together… Take a deep breath and… let it go. Let it all go. All the pain, the suffering. Everything that happened yesterday that still haunts you today, even when it logically is past.

What?

Let it go. It sucks and we hate it and if we could change it, we would. But for now, it’s over. That’s the nice bit about the past; we can learn from it and use it to guide our present to a better future, but it’s done.

We either catch the next ball and forget the shot we missed or we throw the whole damn game away because of one stupid play.

Elvis went into a decline over his marriage with Priscilla that only death stopped. We can learn from the pain he endured by realizing that the only way to get out of a really sucky past situation is to learn from your mistakes, take a deep breath and keep going.

I hope this article will help you keep going, no matter your past.

Elvis’s Lessons:

• When something bad happens to you and keeps on holding you back, even when it’s far in your past, take a deep breath and keep going. You can learn from the past, but you can’t live in it. Living is for the present, and the present shapes the future, not the past. Skip the suffering Elvis had over his broken marriage and learn to accept the situation how it is, and keep going as best you can.

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing Elvis from those good years before he accepted the desperation of his broken marriage, here’s a clip of “Patch it Up” from the 1970 documentary, Elvis: That’s the Way it Is.