Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Have You Heard?

The role of storytelling in marketing is well known. In his book Sources of Power, Gary Klein has a whole chapter devoted to them in which he reminds us that stories are retold because they contain well-packaged wisdom. But, as Hollywood pitches prove, stories can be encapsulated in single sentences.

Thus, while browsing Guy Kawasaki's new venture Truemors, I was struck by how shamefully engaged I was in their top "story" which told how Mike Myers was kicked out of a yoga class for farting. I could not resist clicking on the headline and even before I had, I was already visualising the whole event and imagining how it played out. Since it was the most popular story, I clearly wasn't alone in filling in the gaps.

I shouldn't be surprised. From my time in the entertainment industries, I am a big fan of the tagline and its repeatability. What if you invented a tagline or series of taglines about your product/service? What if you just asked "have you heard about...."? Human inquisitiveness and sociability being what they are, you're very likely to get substantial positive traction if you stay truthful and timely in your claim. What is a marketing campaign, after all, but a series of claims/rumours designed to spread as far as possible for as little expense as feasible?

Postscript: Remember it's not a totally controllable environment. You might fall victim to something like the strange juxtaposition in yesterday's list of most popular stories. At number 1 was the Mike Myer's flatulence fiasco and directly below that, at number 2, was something entitled "Guy Kawasaki lets it rip again." You couldn't make it up. Or could you?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are ed hardy shirts
,pretty ed hardy shirt for men,

ed hardy womens in the ed hardy online store

designed by ed hardy ,
many cheap ed hardy shirt ,glasses,caps,trouers ed hardy shirts on sale ,

You can go to edhardyshirts.com to have a look ,you may find one of ed hardy clothing fit for you
Top qualitymen's jacket,
These cheap jacket are on sale now,you can find
north face jackets inmage on our web

Do you wannaghd hair straighteners for you own , we have many
cheap ghd hair straightenersin style and great,you can choose one from these
hair straightenersAuthentic chaussure pumachaussure sport And chaussure nike shoes
http://www.crazypurchase.com
http://weddingdressseason.com
http://jeancart.com
http://straighthairgirl.blog126.fc2.com
http://www.seriousblogging.com/crazygirlsshirts
http://www.free-blog-site.com/iammyself
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/hotfishing
http://www3.atword.jp/deepseaworld

1:49 AM, May 31, 2009  

Post a Comment

<< Home