When I was a kid, my mother would buy me and my brother popsicles. My favorite flavor was orange. After I finished eating the frozen treat, I would read the joke at the end of the Popsicle stick. It was usually something silly like, “What did Mr. & Mrs. Hamburger name their daughter?” The answer: “Patty!”
Yeah, the joke was pretty corny, but I did something with that joke. I told my brother about it. The creators of the Popsicle inserted remark-ability into their product. I shared that joke like how I share a message from a fortune cookie.
We as humans like to share our messages, opinions, and experiences to others. However, we are more likely to share information that is really interesting rather than information that is not. That’s what remark-ability is all about. We tend to share and market things that we see as remarkable.
Case Study: Blendtec
A blender to most people doesn’t seem interesting at all. The only people I think that will be interested in a new blender are people who love to cook and fitness buffs looking to make a smoothie. But Blendtec makes the blender seem really cool with its YouTube channel, Will it Blend? Its founder, Tom Dickson, was able to find the remark-ability of his product by filming the real-time blending process of products like the iPhone, a remote, and even an Airsoft gun. Viewers stare in awe of how products start to disintegrate piece by piece until they are rubbish. Their videos gets millions of views, and they have over 800K subscribers!
How to Find Your Product’s Remark-ability
In order to make your product share grow like wildfire, you need to figure out what makes it attention-grabbing:
Figure Out What Makes Your Product Interesting
Ask yourself, what about my product is interesting? What features or benefits will grab someone’s attention? Can it be used with another product, or person to emphasize its features? For example, Febreze markets its air freshener by spraying it onto smelly homes and filming the user reaction to show the effectiveness of the product.
Determine If It’s Good Enough to Share
Sometimes the people most attached to the product don’t have the best judgment in whether or not their product is good enough to share. Demonstrate its remark-ability to others to determine whether it’s worthy of attention.
Try to Make It Relevant in Pop Culture
The most remarkable products are the ones that seem relevant to our time. Blendtec grabbed people’s attention by using iconic items like the iPhone to blend. A lot of young people can relate to the significance of the product and are curious to know whether it can blend or not. Buzzfeed uses pop culture and social issues to relate to Millennials so they will be the first person to share their content.
Create a Conversation
Snapple does this better than the popsicle stick. It inserts fun facts into its bottle cap so when a drinker sees it they will be like “Huh, I didn’t know this.” Then the drinker shares the fact with another person starting with “Did you know…?” Snapple is creating a beginning to a conversation through random facts because we have the habit of sharing new information. Buzzfeed creates conversations differently with controversial videos like “10 Things Straight People Say to Gay People.” They are creating these humorous videos in hopes that people will talk about the social significance of it in the comment section.
This article was originally posted to the Business2Community Blog by Beth Romelus on January 5, 2016.
