Author: jakehaws

Check out this cool stop motion viral video made by FlippyCat. What a fun way to promote dominoes!

I recently went to an AMA lunch and listened to Bryan Brandenburg speak about marketing. Bryan started Salt Lake Comic Con less than 2 years ago and it is already the 4th largest comic convention in the country (#1 per capita), with the most recent convention drawing 130,000 attendees. To date, they have brought in a total of over 8 million in revenue. Bryan attributes his success to following the Steve Jobs model of “creating insanely good products that market themselves.” Of course, after you’ve created a great product, you still need to let people know about it. Here are some of my takeaways regarding marketing tactics and strategies that worked for them:

• Use Social Media for Market Research – Bryan was able to look at attendance numbers for other comic conventions like the biggest one in San Diego, look at the regional social media following for comic related things (super heroes, sci-fi tv shows, etc) and compare it to the social media following in Utah for comic related topics. This allowed him to extrapolate a projection for attendance. Based on his research, he predicted attendance of 70K his first year and ended up with an actual attendance of 72K. Having an accurate prediction for this kind of thing is very helpful because it allows them to know how big of a space they need to reserve and to book the biggest drawing panelists they can within their budget.
• Give to Your Audience – Nobody wants to be friends with someone who only shows up when they need something. Engage with your audience. In the social media world, this can mean providing interesting content. It’s also important to be giving. Salt Lake Comic Con gives away thousands of tickets through contests and promotions. They also give away tickets in private when they hear of individuals in need who would like to attend but aren’t able to otherwise. They believe that sending out good karma helps their brand. They try to not be a company to their customers, but rather a friend.
• Consider Brand Extensions – Knowing that they can only do their standard convention once a year, they created another complimentary event billed as “Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience” which incorporates broader pop culture elements in “the worlds of sports, music, and live entertainment” with the comic con environment. This extension of their event has equaled the success of their main events and has allowed them to grow their influence.
• Become an Authority – Be knowledgeable about the things that matter to your audience. Even better, get endorsements from follower’s role models (borrowing authority). In the case of Salt Lake Comic Con, they received an endorsement from Stan Lee (creator of Spiderman, X-Men and many other notable comics), which went far in establishing their legitimacy with their audience and in their industry.
• Carve a Niche for Yourself – Use scarcity to your advantage. Don’t try to create the best solution, create the only solution. If your event or product is truly “one-of-a-kind,” then you can greatly reduce (or even eliminate) your competition. Deliver so well on your solution that you sell out.

Update: Due to a lawsuit with San Diego Comic Con, they’ve now rebranded as FanX.

I love the slow motion production on this music video.

The description of this video mentions it was filmed “in front of 80 extras placed on 80 meters along a little road, lost in an industrial area. Filmed at 1000 frames/second with a camera (Phantom 4k) from a car driven at 50km/h, the shooting took 5 seconds for a 3’30 video: a living and dreamlike mural.”

Pomplamoose are the musical duo Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn. They’ve made their name over the years recording re-imagined cover songs and creating very catchy viral music videos. Here is an example of a Pharrell mashup of “Happy” and “Get Luck”:

In past, they’ve actually made pretty good money from these videos but with the changing climate of Youtube and online content, it’s become increasingly harder to generate revenue. This spawned the idea for Jack Conte to create Patreon, which allows artists to ask their fans for funding on a per project basis. For example, every time you put out a new Youtube videos, your fans would commit to automatically give you one dollar with their debit card. In the case of Pomplamoose, their fans now collectively pay them $6813 for every video they put out. It’s a great twist on crowd-funding that enables artists to keep creating content and engage their fans.

Here is a great speech Jack gave from the XOXO Festival where he discusses Pomplamoose’s progression and the concept for Patreon. It’s well worth the time.

Coke has done a brilliant job with their Share a Coke campaign. If you haven’t seen it, they put a name on every can of Coke and suggest you share it with that person. You can also order your own custom can, if you don’t see it in the store. One couple made their own baby announcement video using the cans (which sort of doubles as an ad for Coke):

I think they’ve done a great job of utilizing their packaging with a fun idea and letting their customers run with it, via #shareacoke. It reminds me of how Jones Soda let’s people submit photos that go on their bottles.

Here’s a great Apple spot for the holidays that ties together old and new technology as well as family generations with each other.

Birdbox is an animation studio based out of London. To help demonstrate their creativity, they came up with a clever idea for Christmas Cards this year: