How to find more lovers?

Posted at January 5, 2012 // Random Thoughts

I have been toying with an idea: a new direction for this blog. Thus far, this blog has been random observations and lessons. But a central theme in marketing has been resonating with me, and perhaps it’d be a good idea to have more posts surrounding this central theme.

What’s this theme, you ask?

Love the Haters.

Since a brand cannot be everyone to everyone, by definition, it’s going to attract some people, and repel some people. You know that you’ve achieved this if you have people who loves your brand AND if you have people who hates your brand.

I love this quote from Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: “If you’re not generating a negative reaction from someone, you’re probably not fascinating anyone.”

But then… the question is… how do you grow? If haters are supposed to stay haters, how do you attract more brand lovers?

Seth Godin today proposed the following: “And the best plan for the insurgent brand? To find a smaller tribe, become the presumed winner there, and scale it up across tribes.”

The trick becomes how do you identify the next tribe…?

That’s one of the many questions I’ve been pondering. This blog will continue to explore this subject. In the meantime, what do you think?

Let’s get this discussion going. Here are some tweetable bits:

Love them brand haters. http://bit.ly/Anhni0 @jeannie_chan

Where to find brand lovers? http://bit.ly/Anhni0 @jeannie_chan

Photo credit: Nancy Everson