Generating buzz
This is a peek at this week’s 🔒 subscriber-only 🔒 post.
Below is a peek at this week’s 🔒 subscriber-only 🔒 post. Subscribe to read the full post.
Q: I’m planning to launch my product soon, and wondering how companies generate buzz when they launch?
Here’s the hard truth: No one cares about your new product.
As Marc Andreessen said, “everyone’s time is already allocated.” With hundreds of products launching each day and endless ads clamoring for our attention, how do you get over the event horizon of attention? Easy: DO SOMETHING REMARKABLE.
“Remarkable is a really cool word, because we think it just means neat, but it also means worth making a remark about.”
ー Seth Godin
Your goal is to create something worth remarking about. Something people will stop and pay attention to, and have to share with their friends. Seth Godin explores this idea further (starting at 6:58):
Great, be remarkable. Thanks, Lenny! How the hell do you do that? Well, I’ve got some answers. I spent the past few weeks collecting and categorizing the buzziest launches I could find. Below, you’ll find the ten most common strategies for launching something worth remarking about (including 49 real-life examples).
I hope the examples below inspire you and your team to create something remarkable ✨
Let’s dive in.
1. Release a remarkable video
2. Create a remarkable product demo
3. Offer a remarkable value prop
Robinhood: “$0 commission stock brokerage”
Dropbox: “Throw away your USB drive”
Gmail: “Free email with 1GB of storage”
Netflix: “No Due Dates, No Late Fees”
Warby Parker: “Try on five pairs of frames at home for free before buying any”
Spotify: “All of the world’s music – for free”
Coin: “Replace eight of your credit cards with just one”
Eero: "Finally, WiFi that works”
4. Execute a remarkable offline stunt
Half.com renamed a town in Oregon to “Half.com” for a year
Salesforce hired fake protesters, commandeered all the taxis at a rival’s event and used them to deliver a 45-minute pitch, etc.
WePay dropped 600 pounds of ice in front of PayPal’s conference
Snapchat dropped off strange vending machines at random locations in LA with a limited number of Spectacles
Tommee Tippee turned parenting help books into limited-edition baby wipes.
5. Start a remarkable controversy
Yo: An app that only lets you send “Yo” to your friends raises $1m
Quibi: Celebrity founders raise ~$2B for a pre-product video platform
Hey.com: Public figure calling out Apple for their App Store fees
Stolen: An app that lets you “buy” your friends on Twitter
Zillow: Zestimates telling you the value of your home
6. Offer a remarkable giveaway
Push for Pizza: One lucky winner at each school will win a pizza scholarship, AKA free pizza for an entire semester, delivered by a Lamborghizza.
Fast: $5 hoodies
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