Action Comics #1, which contains the first-ever appearance of Superman, bought about 15 years ago for $150,000. Not a bad investment at all. CNN Money has the story.

OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash Jr. offered this op-ed in Saturday’s New York Times about YouTube, record company greed and how those record companies by and large don’t understand how to operate in the digital age. It’s well worth reading.

As for OK Go, you may not know the name, but you probably know the band: They’re the ones who created that treadmill video a few years back. You can see a screen shot from the video above, but I can’t embed the video into this post (see it here) because of EMI restrictions … which is part of Damian’s point.

The fact of the matter (pay attention, EMI, and other intellectual property owners) is that free stuff makes people spend more money. As a recent British poll showed, heavy illegal downloaders spend more money on music. My post the other day about The Grateful Dead is relevant, too: The Dead’s legendary openness regarding the taping and trading of live shows was a huge component of helping catapult them to massive financial success.

The bottom line in business today: Trying to exercise absolute control over every iota of intellectual property does more bad than good.

Takeaway for marketers: If you haven’t yet read Free: The Future of a Radical Price, you should. Appropriately, it’s available for free. Get the link here.

That headline, which appeared in The Escapist yesterday, is just too good to ignore. Here’s the story.

FEBRUARY 21 UPDATE: I’ve been appropriately scolded on my Facebook feed for not linking to Joe Bua’s superb blog, I Am A TV Junkie, re: this cultural milestone. Here’s a link that remedies that situation. Sorry, Joe. To make it up to you, here’s a shopping tip: The brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble has Up Till Now on the bargain table for about six bucks.

Do you and/or your company embrace strategic improvisation?

It isn’t hard to spot a few of its recent applications. Giving something away and earning money on the periphery is the same idea proffered by Wired editor Chris Anderson in his recent best-selling book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Voluntarily or otherwise, it is becoming the blueprint for more and more companies doing business on the Internet. Today, everybody is intensely interested in understanding how communities form across distances, because that’s what happens online.

That’s an excerpt from a terrific article in the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic about The Grateful Dead, who used the notion of strategic improvisation to become one of the most financially successful bands of all time. Check it out here.

Takeaway for marketers: Psychology has long been a significant component of serious marketing studies. In today’s networked world, it’s time to add a strong dose of sociology to the mix.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
—Abraham Lincoln