Global Icons of Loserdom

What's the keyword in marketing today? Buzz. If you can get people talking about it, you have a winner. Even if it means making a complete fool of yourself, having a product, service or work of labor which is total crap and worse yet, if you're a global icon of loserdom.
Steven Levy, writing for Newsweek, discusses the internet's unwitting stars, though in a different context. Still fun, though.

Take for instance, the recent O.J. Simpson flap, which had eBay bidders in a frenzy. I mean, I would give an arm and a leg to have people outbid each other in the thousands on eBay for something which belonged to me. Not that I envy OJ, but I do envy the bidding frenzy. "OJ Simpson making thousands on eBay".

Another fine example would be Ashlee Simpson's lip sync fiasco. She got ridiculed the world over. There's been tons of ink spilled over the incident, viral videos on the net and even sites created and maintained just to keep the memory alive. She got more fame in those few seconds of videos than she ever possibly will in her entire career. And she's no where near her more illustrous sibling, Jessica Simpson, in terms of hottiness or talent.

Question: How does one cook up this buzz? Answer: You don't cook it up. Stuff happens. However, what you can do is throw out a few hooks, and hope that someone takes the bait and starts a buzz. Might be enough to give you and your product a moderate chance for success and some much needed exposure. Course, the big players, like Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction incident proves, have the platform to knowingly create a buzz. Let's get down to specifics. What can you do?

Promoting a book? Create a small mockumentry, yeah, that's right. Make a small video, mocking, or making a laughing stock of of your own book, and upload it to Youtube. Send it over to the cable channels, and hope that a few of them pick it up. Make yourself available for interviews. Contact book reviewers, and forward the video and a copy of your book to them. Something's gotta give, if you keep plugging it.

The human brain is a funny thing. No one will remember even the name of your book if a television show host talks about it. But show the audience a video, and there's a bell ringing inside everyone's head which says Video->cool->save, upload and share with friends->buy the book.