Superfandom
How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are
Aaron M Glazer and Zoe Fraade-Blanar
Hachette
318 pages; Rs 499
In April, Carter Wilkerson, a teenager from Nevada, tweeted to Wendy’s, an American fast food chain: “Yo@Wendys how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets?” Mr Wilkerson’s tweet was probably in jest, but Wendy’s chose to humour him nonetheless: “18 million.”
Mr Wilkerson’s subsequent tweet, in which he asks Tweeples (short for “Twitter people”) around the globe to help him reach his goal, was retweeted more than 3.4 million times, the highest ever, beating the earlier record held by Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie Tweet from Oscars 2014.
Marketers would crown Mr Wilkerson’s tweet the ne plus ultra of branding efforts — unplanned, organic customer feedback that got many people to try Wendy’s chicken nuggets for the first time, and pushed the company’s name high on brand recall globally.
Zoe Fraade-Blanar and Aaron M Glazer, authors of the book under review, would call Mr Wilkerson a “superfan”, a member of an enviable club that only some brands are lucky enough to possess, and, if they are smart, nurture. Driven by social media, the “superfan” is young, connected and, most importantly, given to sharing bouquets and brickbats with equal fervour.
Millennials are often portrayed in disparaging terms in the media as a coddled lot that do not appreciate that they are, materially and security-wise, the luckiest generation there has been. In Superfandom, Ms Fraade-Blanar and Mr Glazer dismiss such simplistic generalisations, offering a wide variety of examples that showcase how the medium may have changed but the message remains the same.
Consider Harry Potter. J K Rowling’s creation has transformed from the page into a multi-billion dollar empire with interests in film, merchandise and even theme parks. Or Game Of Thrones (GoT), a television spectacle that has fans hungering for new seasons (or, if they are lucky, spinoffs). To true-blue fans, standing outside a bookshop on the night before a new Potter release or bingeing on a GoT season is an essential rite of passage that they would not give up for anything in the world.
Beyond this, “superfans” can bring about real change in company bottom-lines. Case in point: The death of traditional photography. With the rise of digital prints, many storied companies like Kodak and Polaroid have gone under. But in Polaroid’s case, the company – or at least its idea – saw a revival due to the commitment of two of its “superfans” to instant photography.
When the company decided to cease all production of instant film in 2008, Austrian photographer Florian Kaps got in touch with André Bosman, a former head of film production at the Polaroid factory at Enschede in the Netherlands. Together, they launched the Impossible Project, the, well, impossible plan to relaunch Polaroid with the help of similarly hurting fans.
It worked. The Enschede plant was leased to the company floated by Mr Kaps, who raised $2.6 million from friends and family towards his goal. But that’s just the financials. Ms Fraade-Blanar and Mr Glazer narrate the story of one Erik Smith whose experiences with Polaroid defined some of the most cherished moments of his life. Given a chance to become an Impossible Project pioneer, he jumped at it.
With support from such fans, the Impossible Project has since launched a series of modern Polaroid cameras that are popular with preteens who associate it with retro cool. As anyone bingeing Netflix’s latest hit 13 Reasons Why will tell you, teenagers love nothing more than novelty, and for a generation of digital natives, Polaroid is as novel as it gets.
To be sure, “superfan” enthusiasm can backfire as quickly as it is ignited if the feeling that a cherished ideal has been besmirched goes around. The pushback can be fierce, as Pepsi and Kendall Jenner discovered in April when an advertisement showcased the actor resolve a charged conflict over a bottle of Pepsi. Critics called Mr Jenner’s portrayal of an intermediary between the police and Black Lives Matter protestors “trivialising”. While the ad may have been well-intentioned, it also smacked of tone deafness.
To Ms Fraade-Blanar and Mr Glazer, such reactions are not just common but only to be expected from a demographic that takes its tastes and passions very seriously. Fandom then is not just about commerce; it is a deeply social phenomenon where members try on different clubs for size until they figure out what speaks to them most intimately.
Superfandom works best as a chronicle of such great stories that, by their very nature, resist prescription. The trick, as the Wendy’s story reminds us, is spontaneity — and also, frankly, serendipity. Planned events rarely create that sort of online buzz.
The book should find its way into marketing courses to help prospective MBAs appreciate the fickle world of social media marketing. Meanwhile, marketing mavens, who must justify every dollar spent on embellishing their product, will, on this book’s evidence, just have to wait for Lady Luck to shine on them.