What can you learn from the wolf shirt phenomenon?
I was working tonight on my presentation to the Colorado Independent Publishers Association next Saturday – (I’m speaking on The 5 best ways to promote on Amazon.com) and came across THE WOLF SHIRT on the Amazon site. Perhaps you’ve seen it – a cheap black t-shirt with 3 wolves howling at the moon. The kind of shirt you’d probably get as a white elephant gift at the office Christmas party. But, for some reason, this shirt became a sensation due to reviews that the manufacturer couldn’t pay enough to get. Like these:
“When I first got the shirt I was a bit skeptical of its magic powers. But once I put it on, I was immediately surrounded by hot women!”
and
“While I unfortunately do not yet possess the Three Wolf Moon Tee myself, I am still giving The Shirt 5 stars due to It’s obvious incredible potential and the fact that a friend of mine purchased The Shirt for their child and informed me that It does in fact have a glow-in-the-dark moon. Boo-Rah! A high school friend and I are planning to buy The Shirt to wear to our 30-year reunion in 2018. I am certain the power of The Shirt will only grow exponentially until then.”
This shirt got over 1400 reviews, most of them as funny as these. Now, unless this manufacturer got an incredibly creative bunch of copywriters, I have to believe this was an organic event.
What can we learn from it?
1. If this happens to you and your book/product thank your lucky stars and sacrifice a goat or something to the publicity gods. Because this would never have happened if you had planned it.
2. Don’t even think of trying to plan something like this. That’s how you become a laughing stock on the internet.
3. If you do get reviews that you didn’t quite plan for – see above – laugh and go with the flow. If the manufacturer had gotten mad and tried to surpress them, it would have resulted in even more publicity. But not the good kind.
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September 14, 2009
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Mary · 
2 Comments
Posted in: Amazon.com, Marketing
2 Responses
I’m so glad there is a bit of magic associated with these three wolf shirts. This means that I have a ton of magic in the dresser drawer, that I have shared quite a bit by regifting such items, and that if I buy more through e-bay, I might loose some coin, but I will be gain some much needed mojo!
That would explain that aura of mystery and danger about you….could it be…mojo?
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