
How Startups Can Use Patron's Formula for Building a Successful Online Community - jasonlbaptiste
http://waynechang.com/2010/09/15/patrons-formula-for-building-a-successful-online-community/
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ThomPete
Great case.

I used to work at DDB which did something similar for a pear liquor called
Xanté.

The main goal was to get the bottle to be visible in the bar (which means more
people will see it)

So instead of targeting end users the target was top bartenders.

The campaign went something like this.

1\. Miss Ching (a danish/asian model) would go into a bar and ask for the
chief bartender.

2\. Once found she would tell the bartender that her employer wanted to get in
contact with them about some very important things in a few days.

3\. She would then handle them a cellphone with a few numbers stored in there
already. And then leave.

4\. Over the coming days the phone would then send SMS's out to the bartender
which was basically pre-defined. If people wrote back then they would receive
some random SMS back saying things like "Wisdom lies in paradox"

5\. We would also have website that people could try and hack. It just had a
password and then some of the SMS messages contained clues to parts of the
password.

6\. After the 5th or 6th day they would then receive coordinates that they
were asked to go to.

7\. At the location the would be flown to a castle where the brand would
finally be revealed in it's entirety.

It was pretty successful and got the bottle featured quite a few places.

This was done back in 2001

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ttol
That sounds really interesting. Are there photos/videos of this somewhere?

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morisy
Offline community is such an important part of building online community, and
Patron captured this well, but the part I really liked about this post was how
they looked at the typical available options (hosting parties at a bar) and
then took a perpendicular decision: Let's spend that money on our own terms.

If you've ever done event planning, having a catered gig at a restaurant,
etc., can be extremely prohibitive, but renting a boat and using your own
people can cut through all those overhead costs and deliver a better ROI.

I do wonder: With only ten people, what does Patron do if one of the 10 turns
out to be a real creepy individual, ruining the experience for everyone?

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tlack
Seems like an awful lot of overhead -- in terms of cash and labor -- to only
touch a small amount of people. Compare, for instance, to a nightclub event
sponsored by a liquor in Miami that turns out 500+ people.

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juanito
How many of 500+ people will have negative experiences which they will share
online?

That's the danger of an event like that.

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notahacker
The possibility of negative experiences is the danger of a Patron event too.
It's easier for one person to ruin an "exclusive" event with only 9 other
people, more likely to generate whining from people that have missed out and
easier for the grumpy person to be the only one that actually has a blog.
People arbitrarily selected for a hugely lavish "exclusive" event are
strangely more likely to object to being treated as a glorified photo
opportunity, delays and not liking one of the dishes on the 5* menu than
people lured into a moderately exclusive nightspot by the promise of
entertainment and selected free drinks if they and their friends can stomach
the queues.

You can make more compelling YouTube videos of your branded live music event
too.

The reality is that it all ultimately depends on whether you're trying for
mass appeal or exclusivity.

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KleinmanB
Great article. You clearly understand the importance of building an offline
community to fuel the online one. face to face intimacy can never be replaced
(it was why Yelp started so strong).

I think Patron specifically faces a problem with promoting product use (bottle
registrations, pictures of use ..etc). A liqour company must be militantly
careful about promoting over consumption. By awarding the people who register
the most bottles its not a large logical leap to accuse them of promoting
irresponsible drinking.

What they do know, by just giving the brand an exclusive identity and
promoting participation on the site and events is about as far as they can go.

My suggestions would be for them to start promoting what goes well with Patron
and creating connections to things (food, activities places) that can be
promoted without treading in the dangerous area that is irresponsible
drinking.

Great Work to you and Patron!

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ttol
Thanks Kleinman. I don't have any relationship with Patron (except on some
Saturday nights ;-), but I wanted to share my thoughts on their initiatives.

They put on a damn good event, and they're generating buzz about it -- which
results in more people signing up on their site.

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jdrock
This is pretty awesome... assuming you have the budget for it, and it's a good
idea for members of your community to feel exclusive.

EDIT: I'd be interested in reading examples of technology community building,
particularly for niche services. These seems like a much harder challenge.

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jasonlbaptiste
Offline events are key, especially conferences. Get Satisfaction did this.
We're doing it with work2conference for Cloudomatic. Bring your customers
together in person, educate them, and connect.

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dusklight
Without commenting on the effectiveness of the method outlined in the OP, I
think something should be said about ethics. Science and technology is
advancing rapidly every day, and we now know much more about the heuristics
our brain uses to make decisions, enough to abuse the corner cases and trick
the brain into making the wrong one. Creating artificial scarcity in the
manner described in the article is basically lying. Consumers end up assigning
a higher value to the product than it deserves, and the market is made overall
less efficient as a result.

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iron_ball
You're right, in the literal sense, but your criticism can be applied to all
aspects of advertising. In a perfectly rational or perfectly ethical world,
advertising would simply be a fact sheet informing consumers of your product's
relative advantages.

~~~
absconditus
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhtTU-guW60>

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greg_holsclaw
Hmmm, I was trying to think how you can do such a thing on a smaller scale.
You must have enough people in one geographic area to pull this off. So either
you are launching in only a few locales, or you have a large enough national
following to make this work.

Also, having this much overhead for such a small group demands that those
chosen to participate must be networked type people who are willing and able
to broadcast their experience. Otherwise the experience will only have a muted
affect, and not worth the cost.

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unohoo
Exclusivity & scarcity yield media buzz,PR and demand. What google did with
the initial Gmail invites - the concept is the same, but gotta say - this is
so much better than simply running a media campaign.

I mean, the 10 folks who got invited to the exclusive cruise - they'd so
emphatically describe their experience to their friends / family (just like
this blog post).

