Brilliant marketing gets results.
If you believe you have come up with the Next Big Thing, the product that's going to revolutionize the world and make you a zillionaire, your next step is to figure out an equally brilliant way to let the world know about it. When it comes to actual results, any idea is only as brilliant as the marketing that promotes it. Nobody will buy your idea if they've never heard of it.
Going Viral
Viral marketing uses the power of technology and social contacts to do the marketer's work for him. By introducing a concept, gag, running joke or meme into an environment such as social media or online videos, viral marketers attempt to spur the public into propagating the message by sharing it with their friends. Most of the time, this doesn't work---but when it does work, the results can be spectacular. A successful viral marketer can get public exposure that would have cost millions through traditional advertising channels, and people will do the work for free because they think the message is amusing, or because they want to be involved in something big.
Contagious Catchphrases
Most brilliantly successful marketing campaigns have involved contagious catchphrases that people can't get out of their heads. "Coke Is It," "Where's the Beef?" and "Just Do It" are a few examples of such catchphrases. Advertisers spend huge amounts of money in saturation advertising in attempts to introduce their phrases, and the products that are associated with them, into the public mind. When they are successful at doing this, people become more likely to buy their product because it is stuck in their minds through its relationship to the catchphrase.
Sponsorships
Associating a product with a celebrity is an odd but very effective way of selling it. In a celebrity-obsessed culture, people want to identify with the celebrities whom they idolize, and one way to do that is to own the products that the celebrity recommends. The value of this to the manufacturer is huge, as is evidenced by the millions of dollars paid to people like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Celine Dion just to say that they use or like a certain product. The brilliant celebrity endorsement is the one that identifies the right celebrities at the peak of their fame, matches them with the right product at the right time, and results in huge sales as people get caught up in the herd mentality of celebrity imitation and product acquisition.
