Created by Robert Croak, he stole the idea from China tradeshow. After taking the same design, he made the bracelets a little thicker and patented it in the states. From then, it blew up making over $200 million in revenue in just 2010. He revealed that he didn’t have to have a publicist or do any form of advertising for his product. He explained that he used viral marketing as a market model to achieve success. Viral marketing is that which is able to generate interest and the potential sale of a brand or product through messages that spread like a virus, in other words, quickly, and from person to person. The idea is for it to be the users themselves that choose to share the content.
Made of silicone, Silly Bandz is very cheap to manufacture making profit easy to attain. Their success is also credited to tactic also proved successful due to the target audience. The consumer population was made up of kids, who saw Silly Bandz as a way to collect and trade with their friends. At that age, every kid wants exactly what their friends have, so Silly Bandz spread like wildfire on the playground.
However, just like any fad, it reaches its peak before kids become fascinated with the next trendy item. For now, Silly Bandz will remain a token of our childhood.
Sources:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37689270/ns/business-us_business/t/its-not-stretch-silly-bandz-are-hit/#.XdwNtJNKjOQ
Adding onto the point you said about users sharing the content, I think after some kids starting wearing them that the trend really started. Kids wearing them and playing with them at school advertised them to the other children, making it very easy for these to gain popularity. Competition and collection played a large role in this also. Similar to how people felt cool drinking Sprite in the documentary at school, I think a lot of kids identified with these silly bands. The more they had, the cooler they felt and this helped increase the amount of bands that were bought tremendously.
ReplyDeleteThe success of Silly Bandz can be attributed to the culture they created at schools. Many school children would spend time trading their Silly Bandz with one another, and this served to build friend groups and small communities of students, centered around Silly Bandz. Wanting to be included, their classmates would join in on the Silly Bandz craze as well. This form of viral marketing, where a product becomes popular by word of mouth, and individuals introducing the product to others is similar to how Minecraft became so popular, as discussed in an in-class documentary. Both Marcus Persson, the founder of Minecraft, and Robert Croak, founder of Silly Bandz, took the same approach in using viral marketing to grow their product
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I remember about Silly Bandz, was them being banned from my elementary school. The success of Silly Bandz was huge because it appealed towards children. They were cheap, easy to make, but one thing I found that almost "came with" Silly Bandz was the idea that you could trade. Having the "coolest" shape or best colors, and agreeing with Danielle, the more you had, increased someone's happiness. This meant the more you buy, the more happiness you could achieve. (marginal cost) Even when you bought a pack of Silly Bandz, you would notice it would come with 5-10 bracelets, this opens the doors and opportunity for kids to increase their silly band count.
ReplyDeleteThe success of Silly Bandz can certainly be attributed to their marketing strategies. Specifically, they were able to design something that directly targeted the younger population. The strong appeal it had for kids made it so popular. The trading of silly bandz generated good feelings in the kids, and contributed to the craze. Eventually, I believe the bandz got out of hand, to the point where, like Megan said, they were being banned from schools, etc.
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