Magic Mike

Everyone I know is going to see “Magic Mike” this weekend…ok, not EVERYONE, but a vast majority of my female friends are heading to the movie theaters to see this movie. I’ll venture to say it’s even more than are reading “50 Shades of Grey” and posting about it on Facebook and other social media sites. Advertisers want to be like Magic Mike and have people share their content and collect the social capital created by sharing on social networks.

There was an article (back in the days before blog posts) by David Ogilvy on “How To Create Advertising That Sells” where he outlined 38 things that will help create advertising that sells. Item #9 on that list, Psychological Segmentation, is being used in both of these books…my boss from my ad agency days told me that women 35-54 make 90%+ of the buying decisions in American households and as a woman in that demographic, I firmly believe that it’s true. So Magic Mike and 50 Shades of Grey are hitting the right demographic target, they’re positioned as anything but boring (Ogilvy #6) and they’ve certainly got a grabber (#24). So even though I read 50 Shades of Grey and found the dialog atrocious, the lack of plot ridiculous and the idea that a woman, or any person, would allow themselves to be so completely dominated sad on so many levels, the book is selling like crazy. I’m not the only one…out of nearly 7,000 reviews on Amazon the average rating is 3 stars (out of 5) with more than 2,400 people (more than 1/3!!!) giving it 1 star! Yet people keep talking about it…as I imagine people will continue to see Magic Mike in theaters.

What’s their secret? What do you need to do to your brand to have it spread like wildfire on social networks like Twitter and Facebook? I remember a few other Mike‘s/Mikey‘s that everyone wanted to be like…do you? Leave a comment below to let me know if you think those products/brands created as much social capital or if today’s proliferation of social networks allow even easier social sharing which creates the desired social capital.