As everyone has likely seen, Vancouver went a bit nuts the other day with a riot after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup.
I've always found riots to be an interesting phenomena when it comes to human psychology. When it come to a sporting event they generally arise as the result of mixing a large group of (mostly male) idiots, booze, and a negative outcome to the sporting event.
They of course spiral out of control because you have an even bigger group of idiots called bystanders. If those not participating in the riot where to simply go home, you'd only have a couple hundred rioters which the police could easily handle. But when you add hundreds, if not thousands, of bystanders, the crowd becomes impossible to control.
Those bystanders may think they aren't part of the riot because they aren't throwing things or looting, but they are idiots to think that (if anything, they are what enables the riot to occur).
But anyway, what the Vancouver riot reflects is the same psychological processes that unfold when a brand achieves buzz.
In the riot you essentially get a group of people who create a spectacle (think of these folks as first adopters). The gawkers suddenly take note of the spectacle. Then other people see the gawkers and have to know what it is they are gawking at. Suddenly the gawker population starts growing exponentially until everyone is talking about what is going on (even people who aren't present are getting phone calls or seeing it unfold on the news).
Buzz operates basically on the same principles. Every time Apple releases a new product you get a group of people who rush in to get in, which creates a spectacle (and is also a good reason to release limited quantities to add to the 'sold out' buzz).
Then you've got a bunch of other people who don't know anything about Apple, yet who take an interest in what all the fuss is about simply out of curiosity. Just like in the riot, these people aren't really Apple loyalists, they simply are interested in spectacles. They create the 'mass' behind the buzz. The first adopters, the ones who create the spectacle, aren't enough to create buzz. It's the gawkers, those who don't necessarily have the product, but talk about it a lot, that give the spectacle critical mass.
Before you know it everyone is bringing up the new Apple product during their daily conversations and you've now created buzz. Even people who could care less about Apple know about it because it is brought up by others during their daily conversations.
In PR and marketing we often talk about audiences and focusing our messages at our audiences. But creating buzz is different. You aren't just concerned with your core audience (ie. first adopters and eventual consumers) but also the ensuing gawker population. You care just as much about the people who aren't going to buy the product as those who do. Why? Because they have just as big a role in creating buzz as those who buy the product. Just like the bystanders have just as big a role in the riots as those actually creating the chaos.
This has always been the big problem with RIM. They market only to their core audience. They focus on speeds and feeds, which resonates with the enterprise market, but which the rest of the world could care less about. Apple or Google on the other hand focus on mass awareness of their products. They don't focus on speeds and feeds, but rather on the user experience, how their product changes your life.
Yes, they do make the best products, and that helps a lot (after all, when you use Google search every day it's not hard to generate mass awareness). But don't fool yourself, if they were to market based on speeds and feeds as their competitors often do, the door would be wide open for someone else to knock them off their brand thrones. I mean, really, the buzz around Apple is silly if you ask me. As I've said before, 99.9999999 per cent of their 'apps' are crap and no one will ever use them (and yet, it doesn't matter, because people gawk at the fact that they have 10 billion apps, or whatever the number is).
Anyway, the Vancouver riots, while seemingly unrelated to brand in any way, struck me as being quite related. Get enough human beings doing something and a lot more human beings will gather around to observe the spectacle.
A lot of the 2.0 tech companies of the 21st Century are built around this model. They are the opposite of traditional businesses that focus on creating a base of paying users and then expanding that base through increased sales and marketing. They instead offer free services in the hopes of generating buzz and reaching a critical mass of external interest - Facebook, Linkedin, Google, all these guys are built around mass awareness.
So when you are marketing a product (assuming you are looking to create buzz, which won't always be the case) the question you should always ask yourself is: What will people really be interested in?
You may have put millions in to designing some advanced algorith or spent millions of man-hours to achieve interoperability with other products, but is that what people really care about? It's not to say you shouldn't communicate these achievements, but is it what you lead with in your messaging?
Often times the thing that creates buzz is singular in nature. It's something that one person can communicate to another person in a matter of seconds or a couple of minutes.
I should also add that not every announcement should be about creating buzz. There's nothing wrong with announcements that aren't designed for mass awareness, but rather are tailored to very specific audiences. But you also need to do those mass awareness efforts now and then if you ever want to generate buzz.
When it comes to Vancouver, ironically, the riots have created a negative-brand buzz for the city (essentially wiping out the positive-brand growth they achieved during the olympics). Vancouver will now have to figure out how it will mend the damage done to its brand as a safe and welcoming place to visit in Canada.
I can tell you what I'd do to reverse the damage....
Basically you have to first round up everyone that was rioting (which the Vancouver mayor said they will do).
Then you charge them all.
Then you offer to reduce the charges if each person charged agrees to do a video apology to Vancouverites and Canadians for their behavior.
Then you create a YouTube channel with all the video apologies.
That would create a ton of positive buzz around Vancouver. Once again, if you think back to what people will talk about, that is something that would be talked about around every water cooler in Canada. Shame is also a great deterrent for others thinking of acting like idiots and it also acts to re-establish a sense of dignity among Canadians and a sense that justice was done.
No one ever does this so perhaps there's legal reasons they can't, but it would definitely create positive buzz for the city and re-establish Vancouver as a decent, safe, law-abiding city that doesn't put up with (excuse the french) bullshit.
I've always found riots to be an interesting phenomena when it comes to human psychology. When it come to a sporting event they generally arise as the result of mixing a large group of (mostly male) idiots, booze, and a negative outcome to the sporting event.
They of course spiral out of control because you have an even bigger group of idiots called bystanders. If those not participating in the riot where to simply go home, you'd only have a couple hundred rioters which the police could easily handle. But when you add hundreds, if not thousands, of bystanders, the crowd becomes impossible to control.
Those bystanders may think they aren't part of the riot because they aren't throwing things or looting, but they are idiots to think that (if anything, they are what enables the riot to occur).
But anyway, what the Vancouver riot reflects is the same psychological processes that unfold when a brand achieves buzz.
In the riot you essentially get a group of people who create a spectacle (think of these folks as first adopters). The gawkers suddenly take note of the spectacle. Then other people see the gawkers and have to know what it is they are gawking at. Suddenly the gawker population starts growing exponentially until everyone is talking about what is going on (even people who aren't present are getting phone calls or seeing it unfold on the news).
Buzz operates basically on the same principles. Every time Apple releases a new product you get a group of people who rush in to get in, which creates a spectacle (and is also a good reason to release limited quantities to add to the 'sold out' buzz).
Then you've got a bunch of other people who don't know anything about Apple, yet who take an interest in what all the fuss is about simply out of curiosity. Just like in the riot, these people aren't really Apple loyalists, they simply are interested in spectacles. They create the 'mass' behind the buzz. The first adopters, the ones who create the spectacle, aren't enough to create buzz. It's the gawkers, those who don't necessarily have the product, but talk about it a lot, that give the spectacle critical mass.
Before you know it everyone is bringing up the new Apple product during their daily conversations and you've now created buzz. Even people who could care less about Apple know about it because it is brought up by others during their daily conversations.
In PR and marketing we often talk about audiences and focusing our messages at our audiences. But creating buzz is different. You aren't just concerned with your core audience (ie. first adopters and eventual consumers) but also the ensuing gawker population. You care just as much about the people who aren't going to buy the product as those who do. Why? Because they have just as big a role in creating buzz as those who buy the product. Just like the bystanders have just as big a role in the riots as those actually creating the chaos.
This has always been the big problem with RIM. They market only to their core audience. They focus on speeds and feeds, which resonates with the enterprise market, but which the rest of the world could care less about. Apple or Google on the other hand focus on mass awareness of their products. They don't focus on speeds and feeds, but rather on the user experience, how their product changes your life.
Yes, they do make the best products, and that helps a lot (after all, when you use Google search every day it's not hard to generate mass awareness). But don't fool yourself, if they were to market based on speeds and feeds as their competitors often do, the door would be wide open for someone else to knock them off their brand thrones. I mean, really, the buzz around Apple is silly if you ask me. As I've said before, 99.9999999 per cent of their 'apps' are crap and no one will ever use them (and yet, it doesn't matter, because people gawk at the fact that they have 10 billion apps, or whatever the number is).
Anyway, the Vancouver riots, while seemingly unrelated to brand in any way, struck me as being quite related. Get enough human beings doing something and a lot more human beings will gather around to observe the spectacle.
A lot of the 2.0 tech companies of the 21st Century are built around this model. They are the opposite of traditional businesses that focus on creating a base of paying users and then expanding that base through increased sales and marketing. They instead offer free services in the hopes of generating buzz and reaching a critical mass of external interest - Facebook, Linkedin, Google, all these guys are built around mass awareness.
So when you are marketing a product (assuming you are looking to create buzz, which won't always be the case) the question you should always ask yourself is: What will people really be interested in?
You may have put millions in to designing some advanced algorith or spent millions of man-hours to achieve interoperability with other products, but is that what people really care about? It's not to say you shouldn't communicate these achievements, but is it what you lead with in your messaging?
Often times the thing that creates buzz is singular in nature. It's something that one person can communicate to another person in a matter of seconds or a couple of minutes.
I should also add that not every announcement should be about creating buzz. There's nothing wrong with announcements that aren't designed for mass awareness, but rather are tailored to very specific audiences. But you also need to do those mass awareness efforts now and then if you ever want to generate buzz.
When it comes to Vancouver, ironically, the riots have created a negative-brand buzz for the city (essentially wiping out the positive-brand growth they achieved during the olympics). Vancouver will now have to figure out how it will mend the damage done to its brand as a safe and welcoming place to visit in Canada.
I can tell you what I'd do to reverse the damage....
Basically you have to first round up everyone that was rioting (which the Vancouver mayor said they will do).
Then you charge them all.
Then you offer to reduce the charges if each person charged agrees to do a video apology to Vancouverites and Canadians for their behavior.
Then you create a YouTube channel with all the video apologies.
That would create a ton of positive buzz around Vancouver. Once again, if you think back to what people will talk about, that is something that would be talked about around every water cooler in Canada. Shame is also a great deterrent for others thinking of acting like idiots and it also acts to re-establish a sense of dignity among Canadians and a sense that justice was done.
No one ever does this so perhaps there's legal reasons they can't, but it would definitely create positive buzz for the city and re-establish Vancouver as a decent, safe, law-abiding city that doesn't put up with (excuse the french) bullshit.
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