sfandom – Page 5 – Superfandom, the Book

Marketplace Weekend: ‘Superfandom’ looks at the economic power of fans

April 1, 2017Interviews

The new book “Superfandom,” written by Zoe Fraade-Blanar and Aaron M. Glazer, explores the powerful ways fans can influence business. Sometimes it’s in support of a business, like when a group of instant photography fans revived film after Polaroid ceased production. It can also work against businesses, like when a small group of angry fans of Maker’s Mark revolted online after the liquor company changed its recipe, causing the company to reverse its business decision.

Host Lizzie O’Leary sat down with co-author Fraade-Blanar to discuss the new book.
[Listen here]

Huffington Post: When Does Fan Devotion to a Favored Celebrity Become a Problem?

March 31, 2017November 11, 2019Articles

We’re often asked if fandom is just a form of marketing. In a way, yes. At the heart of almost every fan object, these centers of emotion and love that arise from pop culture, lies a commercial product. A thing that can be exchanged for money. It might be a product, an experience, a ticket, or the advertising value of our eyeballs as we watch our favorite YouTube channel. In fact, another definition of fandom is ‘externally-generated branding’.

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Inc | The Future of the Brands and Fans Digital Connection

March 30, 2017Interviews

Watching football, whether at home or in person at a game, is more fun when using the #mondaynightfootball hashtag. Dressing up as the anime character Jessie from Pokemon practically requires an audience who can say, ‘Whow, how did you get the hair to stay that way?” Very few people would show up to a Star Trek convention with no one else there.

Fandom is inherently social. But our fellow fans do more than just make things interesting. In many situation, they make things possible.

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Psychology Today: Superfandom as its Contents

March 30, 2017Reviews

Each time Justin Bieber launches a new CD, his fans organize a “buyout.” They march through Kmarts and Best Buys in an attempt to propel the album to the top of the charts. Since few of the teens own CD players, the CDs are often collected and donated to charity at the end of the shopping spree.

Rituals and customs like these, Zoe Fraade-Blanar and Aaron Glazer suggest, bind fans closer to the object of their adulation and to one another. Fueled, of course, by social media, the modern explosion of fandom can do wonders for the “brand.”

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Boing Boing | Ikea vs Superfans: how paranoid trademark lawyers make everything suck

March 28, 2017November 11, 2019Excerpts

In 2014, IKEA, the Swedish-based global furniture company, sent a cease-and-desist letter to a blogger by the name of Jules Yap. Yap ran the extremely popular website IKEAhackers.net, which helped people “hack” IKEA furniture into new, creative, and unexpected designs. The site was already almost a decade old when IKEA’s lawyers demanded that Yap hand over the URL. What follows is a case study from Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are.

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Inc. : How Warren Buffett Built a Massive Base of Superfans

March 24, 2017November 11, 2019Excerpts

In their book, Superfandom: How Our Obsessions Are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are, authors and cofounders of toy company Squishable Zoe Fraade-Blanar and Aaron Glazer dig into how some brands manage to turn ordinary consumers into diehard fans. In this edited excerpt, they discuss why Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting is know as the “Woodstock of Capitalism.”

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CNBC: Obsessed: How superfans took over the world

March 23, 2017Interviews

What do people dressed up in Harry Potter costumes waiting for a book release have in common with the pilgrims to the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting?

They’re all devoted superfans, and they’re the subject of the new book “Superfandom: How Our Obsessions Are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are.”

“Fandom is a topic that has a lot of baggage. We associate it with crying tweens at a Bieber concert, or elderly eccentrics collecting beanie babies,” says Zoe Fraade-Blanar, who wrote the book with Aaron Glazer.

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Salon: Rise of the superfans: Obsession drives social change

March 23, 2017Interviews

These experts say “superfans,” like those who obsess over Harry Potter, are changing how brands approach consumers. “Fans often know the ‘fan object’ better than the owners,” said Zoe Fraad-Blanar, co-author with her business partner and husband Aaron Glazer of the new book “Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are.”

[Watch here]

NPR/WNYC: How Superfans Run The Economy

March 23, 2017March 23, 2017Interviews

Zoe Fraade-Blanar, faculty member of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and Journalism and Chief Design Officer of the crowd sourced toy company Squishable, and Aaron M. Glazer, co-founder and CEO of Squishable, talk about their new book Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017). They explain how we are living in “fandom-based economy,” where devoted fans are in charge of what’s bought and sold.

[Listen here]

New York Magazine/The Cut: Why Manic Panic Is Still Cool

March 22, 2017November 11, 2019Excerpts

Tish Bellomo looks to be in her fifties, but it’s difficult to know for sure — there are few pictures from the past forty years of her or of her sister Eileen, who goes by “Snooky,” without both of them sporting wild, fluorescent-colored hair. News clippings from the eighties hanging in their shared office show it layered, feathered, and back-combed into a fiery mane. At the moment, hers is bright pink with a green streak at the front — a nod to the hair-dye brand that made her and her sister famous four decades ago, and the company they still run today: Manic Panic. [Read more]