Nowadays, people live their lives in the way they were “meant” to live – they wake up, go to work, come home, enjoy some quality time with family/friends/alone and go to bed. Sounds familiar? This is the regular life of an average 30 year old. Except what we aren’t considering is the one factor we cannot see – the boredom. You can see how the mood changes when the Oscars come around, or Christmas, or the Super Bowl. In the midst of all the events that make up the yearly calendar, we find that people are actually waiting for something different to happen, special events that aren’t related to religion or politics, but to specific product related events – the Portuguese case is the Super Bock Super Rock festival hosted by the beer company Super Bock – and general entertainment events that are already part of the normal calendar – Oscars, Emmys, Grammies, MTV Video/Music/Movie/Video Music awards. Why does this happen? One word – Hype.
Hype plays a major role in people’s lives. What was first recalled as a marketing strategy to promote something excessively is now an actual demand in the normal consumer’s lifestyle. This leads to a sociological problem - we are not happy with our lives as they are. We need something happening in the World to take us away from the normality of our daily tasks. The bottom line - people are always waiting for the next big thing. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone. Older audiences, less exposed and influenced by MTV or the big TV Shows, focus on the products functionalities, brand liability and price. But let’s face it – that public is growing old, so we should start thinking on what to do with the future hype addictive audience.
Face it - if it isn’t grand, it doesn’t capture the public’s attention. Consumers live waiting for something to spruce up their lives. They go from Christmas to Easter, then Summer, then to those dark months before Christmas again. And in the middle we have the various general entertainment and product related events, like the launch of a new Coca Cola flavor, to spice up our lives. This resembles what is shown in the movie “Closer” applied to life in general – we’ll mostly remember the special moments of our lives but not those simple moments where we weren’t doing anything that special. Taking this in account with the Hyping Effect, people are becoming Human Hourglasses, just waiting for these events, their lives empty with the mundane tasks - working, eating, entertaining ourselves, breathing, surviving.
The Brands are now paying for their over hyping effect - the audiences crave the excitement in their lives in any way possible. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They don’t have to worry about the information itself - they just need to be able to correctly expose it and create a viral effect. But some brands aren’t oriented towards this hyping effect. What does this mean for the marketers? The keyword for your strategic thinking should always relate to EMOTION. Don’t tell people that your detergent is actually better than the competitions - make a mystery about it. Entertain your crowd; give them something to look forward to. Create a buzz and always remember that Marketing is becoming more and more like showbiz – razzle dazzle them! Marketers have a challenge now when thinking of smaller budgets and less impacting brands. The solution goes through thinking about the target. Is it young? Hype it. Is it older? Sell it. Either way, connect with your audience and always remember – if you are not giving them a good experience, you have lost them in one second.
Pretty ironic that you posted this on a Stevenote day!