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 technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
.
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 f ...
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 c ...
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 fashion, punk, Skateboarding#Culture, skateboarding, 1980s no ...
brands have collaborated with luxury fashion to justify charging premium prices for their goods. As an example, fashion label
Vetements
VETEMENTS (from ''vêtements'' []; French for "clothes") started in 2014 as a Swiss luxury Fashion design, fashion house and "design collective" founded by Georgian fashion designers Demna Gvasalia and Guram Gvasalia. The brand experienced near-i ...
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 when done for profit) 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 compan ...
). The resale market is a $24 billion 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 more significant proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in con ...
may release products as a collaborate with
ready-made garment brands as a way to build hype. Collaborations have been used by some luxury brands to circumvent
fast fashion
Fast fashion is the 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 quickly while demand is at its highest. The term ''fast ...
brands copying their designs.
NYU
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a non-denominational all-male institutio ...
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 latch onto a fad or scheduled e ...
.
Comme des Garçons
Comme des Garçons (CDG, ) is a Japanese fashion label, founded by Rei Kawakubo in 1969. It is based in Paris, where its flagship store is located. Other than fashion, the label has expanded to include jewelry and perfume (under the brand Comme ...
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.
In 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 Hypebeast may refer to:
* Hypebeast culture, a contemporary youth culture focused on clothing styles
*Hypebeast (company)
Hypebeast is a Hong Kong–listed company that focuses on contemporary culture and lifestyle. It was originally founded in 2 ...
. 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.
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) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, ...
to guarantee or improve their chances of purchasing a limited-edition product.
See also
*
Content house
A content house, or also known as a collab house, creator house, content collective or influencer group, is a residential property which is most commonly used by internet celebrities, social media influencers or content creators in order to provid ...
*
Content marketing
Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used in order to achieve the following business goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand t ...
*
Creator economy
The creator economy or also known as creator marketing and influencer economy, is a software-driven economy that is built around creators who produce and distribute content, products, or services directly to their audience, leveraging social me ...
*
Gartner hype cycle
The Gartner hype cycle is a graphical presentation developed, used and branded by the American research and advisory firm Gartner to represent the maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies. The hype cycle framework was i ...
*
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing (also known as influence marketing) is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, individuals and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or so ...
*
Social commerce
Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves social media and online media that supports social interaction, and user contributions to assist online buying and selling of products and services.
More succinctly, social commerce ...
*
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for b ...
References
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Marketing strategy
Social media