Hype in marketing is a strategy of using extreme publicity. Hype as a modern marketing strategy is closely associated with

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

. Marketing through hype often uses

artificial scarcity Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fi ...

to induce demand. Consumers of hyped products often participate as a form of

conspicuous consumption In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen co ...

to signify characteristics about themselves. Hype allows brands to promote their image above the actual quality of the product.

Streetwear Streetwear is a style of casual clothing which became global in the 1990s. It grew from New York hip hop fashion and Californian surf culture to encompass elements of sportswear, punk, skateboarding and Japanese street fashion. Eventually hau ...

brands have collaborated with luxury fashion to justify charging premium prices for their goods. As an example, fashion label Vetements used social media channels to promote a limited-edition hoodie which sold 500 units in hours, recording sales of €445,000. When hype marketing is used to drive demand for limited-edition goods, consumers sometimes attempt resell those good on secondary markets for a profit (comparable to

ticket scalping Ticket resale (also known as ticket scalping or ticket touting) is the act of reselling tickets for admission to events. Tickets are bought from licensed sellers and then sold for a price determined by the individual or company in possession of ...

). The resale market is a $24 billion dollar industry.

Method

Luxury brands In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to n ...

may release products as a collaborate with

ready-made garment Ready-made garments are mass-produced finished textile products of the clothing industry. Ready-made are garments that can be bought off of store racks or online, and are ready to wear. They are not custom tailored according to measurements, but ...

brands as a way to build hype. Collaborations have been used by some luxury brands to circumvent

fast fashion Fast fashion is a term used to describe the clothing industry's business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and High fashion, high-fashion designs, mass production, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail stores qui ...

brands copying their designs.

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Professor Adam Alter says that for an established brand to create a scarcity frenzy, they need to release a limited number of different products, frequently. Hype is often built via

Pop-up retail Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK, Australia and Ireland) or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to catch onto a fad or scheduled e ...

Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons (also known as CDG) is a Japanese fashion label based in Paris that was created and led by Rei Kawakubo. Its French flagship store is located in Paris. This label owns a world-wide store chain featuring various lines of prod ...

was one of the first to use this strategy, leasing a short-term vacant shop solved the storage problems of releasing product for quick sale.

Popular culture

The term ‘hypebeast’ has been coined to define consumers vulnerable to hype marketing. The origins of the term come from the Hong Kong based company Hypebeast. The behaviours of the hypebeast define hype marketing; the purchase of popular goods they can’t afford to impress others. Hype also manifests itself in queues with brands often retailing hyped products through pop-up stores. The use of hype has created a range of associated expressions; * 'Drop' - the actual release of the product * 'Cop' - to purchase the product * 'Taking the L' - unsuccessful in attempt to purchase the product Many luxury brands release hyped products via their online shop. This has led to the creation of companies that allow consumers to use

bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...

to guarantee or improve their chances of purchasing a limited-edition product.

References

{{reflist Marketing strategy Social media

Method

Popular culture

See also

References