A review of David Meerman Scott’s book reveals how you can get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories.

Unless LCE’s circulation has plummeted, it’s safe to assume that thousands of readers are skimming this review. I don’t know thousands of people personally, so it’s also safe to assume that you and I have never corresponded. However, I can make you—both the general you and the specific you (e.g. Dylan Zachary of Brooklyn, NY)—an evangelist for my business simply by giving you a reason to spread my message to your friends and acquaintances.

This is the overriding message behind David Meerman Scott’s invigorating World Wide Rave (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009). Here, he illustrates how marketing’s old tools are going the way of the dodo and are being replaced by a more strategic, yet rougher-around-the-edges approach to grabbing a target market by the lapels and inciting it to pay attention.

Scott maintains that the old-school approach of capturing sales leads or accruing press clippings is woefully outdated, and is being replaced by a pipeline that values immediacy and creativity over big-budget campaigns.
Scott begins by telling us that marketers are actually blessed to be living at a time when we can skip over the tired and expensive means of communication to “…reach the world directly, without having to be spending enormous amounts of money…” The alternative, he says, is to create “…content people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family and colleagues.”

Written in a textbook format, Scott begins with six “Rules of the Rave,” which he believes are essential to any effective marketing campaign. Forget about enticing your audience to learn more about your products, and assume no one cares about your product. That means you must make them care about the content of your message. 

Scott is crystal clear when explaining how businesses of all shapes and sizes will benefit from this new mindset. He also stresses that the most outlandish ideas come across as surprisingly simple and easy to implement. But before embarking on marketing adventures that are radically different from yesterday’s tactics, he says, the real challenge lies in breaking down the old beliefs about what will and won’t work.

For example, the exponential growth of the blogosphere has changed how our target markets gather and digest information that specifically relates to their interests. We have access to more information than our ADD-addled brains can retain, but we’ll always focus on news and entertainment that speaks with us, not at us. 

One of my favorite examples arrives early in World Wide Rave when Scott tells the story of how the “new media” marketing department at Universal Orlando Resort, home to Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure, decided to forego traditional means when launching The Wizarding of Harry Potter—a mega-million-dollar attraction that, in the past, would have been announced with a barrage of advertising, direct mail and other tools we lovingly refer to as “junk.”

Instead of spending the equivalent of Costa Rica’s GNP on such a program, Universal reached out to seven influencers who were known, in this case, to be particularly vocal fans of the Potter franchise who also ran heavily trafficked blogs on all things Potter. The lucky and somewhat surprised Potter fanatics were invited to take part in a secret webcast in which the production designer for all seven Potter films, Stuart Craig, presented the behind-the-scenes story on how the designers created the theme-park attraction. 

The result of this effort, which included other low-cost methods of communication, was a story that made the rounds of every major news organization and reached an estimated audience of—drum roll, please—350,000,000 Harry Potter fans. And Universal did it for a tiny fraction of a typical—and potentially less effective—publicity campaign.

The ultimate goal, says Scott, is to make your audience take notice with content that speaks directly to their interests. You may not want to abandon special promotions, lead generators and the those all-too-familiar tactics just yet, but keep in mind that the way we absorb information has drastically changed. In order to understand what Scott calls buyer personas, it’s critical to dive head-first into the blogs and social-networking sites that speak to your constituencies. Coercive marketing techniques are being replaced by a mindset that preaches good listening habits and a quick response time. It’s easier and less expensive than we ever thought possible.

Adam Sohmer is the owner and president of Sohmer Associates, LLC, a public relations agency specializing in the consumer electronics, professional audio, and high-technology sectors. You can reach Adam at adam@sohmerassoc.com or visit sohmerassoc.com.