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People love the sound of their own names. They want people to remember their names. They want businesses to recognize their names. More importantly, they want their names to mean something to other people. So, let’s talk about how promoting vanity helped some businesses.
The Larry David Sandwich
How many of you are fans of “Curb Your Enthusiasm?” For those of you who aren’t, there was an episode where a deli named their sandwiches after local people, most of which were celebrities. These people would compete with each other over whos sandwich was better. They would tell their friends about their sandwiches and bring them to the deli to try it. In short, the deli tapped into the local vanity market and sold a ton of sandwiches.
Names, Names, Names
Now, consider the local newspaper success story Chip and Dan Heath talk about in “Made to Stick.” The Daily Record, founded by Hoover Adams, focused on “names, names, names.” This strategy helped them take this local newspaper from startup to the number one Dunn, North Carolina newspaper. Or, more specifically, one of the only local papers that had more subscriptions than people living in town.Overall, The Daily Record crushed the competition because they stuck to their local roots by using community names and community pictures.
College Girls on College Humor
When I was in college I remember these two girls. They went out one night and drank too much. They ended up making out and pictures were taken of them. About a week later, one of the girls said, “How cool is this? We’re on College Humor.” They told their friends about it and asked us to check it out. College Humor gave people their five minutes of fame and every person featured talked about it, which resulted in more traffic for College Humor.
More recently, they launched the “Hottest College Girl” contest where they ask for user submissions and let the community vote on the hottest college girl. Since these girls want to win, they will tell their friends and family to vote resulting in more traffic for College Humor.
The Success Factors Prescription
You now know three things:
- How a deli built buzz
- How a newspaper crushed its competition,
- How College Humor grew organic traffic
But, now you are asking yourself, “What can this information do for me? How can it improve my business?”
1. Make Your Customers Celebrities - The college girls were personally involved in promoting the College Humor website since they wanted votes to win the contest. So, you should look to make your customers personally involved in promoting your business. For example, when Shoemoney sends out a free Shoemoney t-shirt, he asks people to take a picture wearing it. They’re glad to do it because they get on Shoemoney’s popular website, and he’s glad to let them because he gets free promotion.
2. Find the Influencers and Talk About Them - The deli found the local influencers and played on their vanity. While the influencers argued over who had a better sandwich, several local customers would be buying the sandwiches and trying it for themselves. You can look to use this in your business by getting the big name influencers involved. For bloggers, you don’t need these celebrities to promote you. Instead, write an article about them and see what happens.
3. Join the Community – The Daily Record joined the local community and stayed local, which made local people want to read it. You can accomplish this by immersing yourself in your niche and never leaving. For example, now that Darren Rowse started Twitip, have you noticed how much he talks about Twitter on Twitter?
What Do You Think?
Do you have anything to add? Leave a comment.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post Derek. I liked how you touched on the escalating trend of evangelizing customers and influencers to create more business. It reminded me of the Mozy (online backup) commercials that feature iJustine. Mozy is clearly wanting to tap into the huge social network iJustine has built for herself with her popular blog. I expect these trends to escalate as social media and inbound marketing continue to drive the bulk of new business in a digital world.
@Chad That is a great example. Now if only more companies would get it. They would finally stop wasting money on useless old guard advertising and put their money where they see the best ROI.
Hey Derek,
Nice post, very informative. I like the idea of the deli who had people competing with each other thereby branding that deli’s name. I’m trying to see how I can capitalize on that
I’ll keep you posted.
And the problogger dude, brilliant. Jumped on the twitter blog at just the right time. Good for him!
AJ Kumar
@AJ It was almost so obvious of an idea, yet no one else did it. Have to give Darren some credit for sure.
Seems all three of those examples are really the same key here, and that is how you name and make your product marketable. If you put that personal value into something either as your own committment that is demonstrable or some value for your market to gain from, you can reach success with that.
@Mike I totally agree Mike. I wanted to illustrate my point with three very different examples.
Nice article Derek.
Seth Godin posted an article a day or two ago saying that now is the time to get into the newspaper business. I don’t think it’s a great time to go into the traditional newspaper business, but his point was to go local, very local (zip code local). Your 3rd point reminded me of that.
Derek, this is a fantastic blog and super helpful. Congratulations – you are quite talented. Speaking of Thesis, the first time I saw your site I remember thinking how good it looked and wondering what theme you used.
Chris Pearson is quite amazing with his development.
Hi Derek, I am agree with you.
A little example : when we shake hands with someone, we will feel so delightful when the person we shake hand with call our name.
@Arswino … not just call the name, but when you remmeber the name in a few months… People are even more impressed.
Awesome tips on generating buzz. Love the Deli bit! Hey – question. I use Thesis as well. How do I get that footer you have? “Related Articles” and “Bookmark and Promote?”
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