What does it mean to be a fan of something? For some, it’s lining up outside a bookstore in order to get their hands on a new book at midnight or donning costumes to celebrate their favorite characters. For others, it’s using a shared hashtag to talk about that crazy play that just happened on Monday Night Football. We explore what it means to be a fan, how fandom has changed over times, what superfandom is, and how our obsessions change what we buy and who we are. Listen >
Month: March 2017
Review: Booklist
Here’s an insightful and entertaining look at the culture of fandom, from its early days right up to the present. The authors focus on the way fandom has evolved from an essentially passive pastime—people liked something, so they tried to acquire it or produce their own versions of it—to a symbiotic relationship between consumer and producer. These days, acquisition is a lot easier than it used to be, thanks to online shopping, which means that fans have more time for peripheral activities, including—and this is the most fascinating element of the book—persuading the people who make things to make the things the fans want. The authors call it a “fandom singularity”: marketers exploit fans by producing things they know the fans will buy, while at the same time fans influence what the marketers produce (there’s a hugely popular, entirely computer-generated Japanese pop singer, Hatsune Miku, whose material is often suggested or even written by “her” fans). Well-reasoned and engagingly written, this book will make readers realize that a new product that seems to have been made just for them, so perfectly does it fit their taste, probably was—because marketers know what we want and because we’ve told the marketers to give it to us. Fascinating and more than a little frightening.— David Pitt
Praise from Jonah Berger
“Superfandom is the ultimate guide to making the most of the new fan-based economy. It presents the new way businesses interact with their customers, and it’s funny, too. Read it for insights into epic failure and brilliant success in fan management, or read it for stories about the politics of Disney’s social clubs. Either way, you won’t regret it. Your fandom will be better off for it.”
–Jonah Berger, professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and best-selling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On
Praise from Robert Thompson
“In a 1986 sketch on Saturday Night Live, William Shatner told a gathering of Trekkers at a Holiday Inn in Rye, New York, to “get a life . . . for crying out loud.” A lot has happened since then. Tremendous technological transformations and online opportunities have created a complex calculus regarding the relationship between texts and brands and the people who love them. Superfandom provocatively explores this evolving relationship―with a dazzling number of examples―and describes what happens when fans don’t just consume something but influence it as well. And it’s not just a celebration of the new voices now being heard in the process of the production of culture; it also describes how superfans can, on occasion, be real pains-in-the-neck.”
–Robert Thompson, professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communication and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University
Praise from Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky:
“Fans aren’t just customers―they care more about what your company does, both good and bad―and no one understands how fans tick and what they can mean for a business better than Zoe and Aaron.”
–Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Mashable
Toy companies like Lego have experimented here and there with crowdsourcing, listening to customers’ input and churning out products they’re looking for. But it’s the core of Squishable’s mission.
The New York startup allows fans to choose and design plush, furry stuffed animals. Led by a husband and wife, the 11-person team uses social media to build a dedicated following, turning its 850,000 Facebook fans into active participants in the creative process, engaging with customers on every aspect from design to color.
Fast Company
The great German writer and realpolitik statesman Goethe once said “talent is nurtured in solitude.” The only way to achieve true creativity, then, was to become “a child of solitude.”
But in our culture of constant connectivity, is solitude still needed, let alone possible? And when creators come down to Earth via Twitter, Facebook, and email, making themselves more publicly accessible than ever before, is there any hope for pure, untempered creation? Has the Internet made writers, painters, architects, and scientists more successful because they can reach a wider audience, or has all that white-noise hamstrung the very value these people are known for: creation? After all, what is art now, aside from the random expressions of everyone?
The Wall Street Journal
When was the last time you went to a party that had a ball pit made out of stuffed animals?
Exactly.
This was one of the draws of an open house at Squishable, a stuffed animal company based in Chelsea. The conference room in the 900- or so-square-foot office was filled with 175 or so squishy, ultrasoft, oversize stuffed animals. Many were prototypes, overstock or samples, and guests were invited to jump and play around inside.
“Everyone loves to come for the ball pit,” saidAaron Glazer, who co-founded Squishable with his wife, Zoe Fraade-Blanar, in 2007. “You just missed a bunch of fashionable ladies in stilettos jumping around in it.”