How Startups Can Use Patron's Formula for Building a Successful Online Community | Hacker News Reader

How Startups Can Use Patron's Formula for Building a Successful Online Community

waynechang.com

46 pointsjasonlbaptiste20 comments

Open articleView on HN

Great case.

I used to work at DDB which did something similar for a pear liquor called Xanté.

The main goal was to get the bottle to be visible in the bar (which means more people will see it)

So instead of targeting end users the target was top bartenders.

The campaign went something like this.

1. Miss Ching (a danish/asian model) would go into a bar and ask for the chief bartender.

2. Once found she would tell the bartender that her employer wanted to get in contact with them about some very important things in a few days.

3. She would then handle them a cellphone with a few numbers stored in there already. And then leave.

4. Over the coming days the phone would then send SMS's out to the bartender which was basically pre-defined. If people wrote back then they would receive some random SMS back saying things like "Wisdom lies in paradox"

5. We would also have website that people could try and hack. It just had a password and then some of the SMS messages contained clues to parts of the password.

6. After the 5th or 6th day they would then receive coordinates that they were asked to go to.

7. At the location the would be flown to a castle where the brand would finally be revealed in it's entirety.

It was pretty successful and got the bottle featured quite a few places.

This was done back in 2001

That sounds really interesting. Are there photos/videos of this somewhere?

Offline community is such an important part of building online community, and Patron captured this well, but the part I really liked about this post was how they looked at the typical available options (hosting parties at a bar) and then took a perpendicular decision: Let's spend that money on our own terms.

If you've ever done event planning, having a catered gig at a restaurant, etc., can be extremely prohibitive, but renting a boat and using your own people can cut through all those overhead costs and deliver a better ROI.

I do wonder: With only ten people, what does Patron do if one of the 10 turns out to be a real creepy individual, ruining the experience for everyone?

There was a lot of staff on hand so I'm sure if someone got rowdy... "man overboard!". In all seriousness, we got lucky -- everyone enjoyed the event. Food was amazing delicious. I wish they put the recipes online for the food instead of just the cocktail ones..

Seems like an awful lot of overhead -- in terms of cash and labor -- to only touch a small amount of people. Compare, for instance, to a nightclub event sponsored by a liquor in Miami that turns out 500+ people.

I wonder how many of those 500 people would write an effusive blog post like this one about the event.

I think you're overestimating this one blogger's reach vs. 500/X's Facebook likes, checkins or comments (X being a vague social non-participation factor which is shrinking quickly). Consider the size of all those people's social graphs, how many impressions are made. The event would still have to be excellently run and inventive (like the Patron event in the article) to maximize impact, but I don't see a reason for such small groups like this unless money is literally no object.

How many of 500+ people will have negative experiences which they will share online?

That's the danger of an event like that.

So you're saying you would purposely invite fewer people to an event (even if that means a much higher cost per participant) in order to minimize negative reviews? That doesn't make very much sense to me.

The possibility of negative experiences is the danger of a Patron event too. It's easier for one person to ruin an "exclusive" event with only 9 other people, more likely to generate whining from people that have missed out and easier for the grumpy person to be the only one that actually has a blog. People arbitrarily selected for a hugely lavish "exclusive" event are strangely more likely to object to being treated as a glorified photo opportunity, delays and not liking one of the dishes on the 5* menu than people lured into a moderately exclusive nightspot by the promise of entertainment and selected free drinks if they and their friends can stomach the queues.

You can make more compelling YouTube videos of your branded live music event too.

The reality is that it all ultimately depends on whether you're trying for mass appeal or exclusivity.

Great article. You clearly understand the importance of building an offline community to fuel the online one. face to face intimacy can never be replaced (it was why Yelp started so strong).

I think Patron specifically faces a problem with promoting product use (bottle registrations, pictures of use ..etc). A liqour company must be militantly careful about promoting over consumption. By awarding the people who register the most bottles its not a large logical leap to accuse them of promoting irresponsible drinking.

What they do know, by just giving the brand an exclusive identity and promoting participation on the site and events is about as far as they can go.

My suggestions would be for them to start promoting what goes well with Patron and creating connections to things (food, activities places) that can be promoted without treading in the dangerous area that is irresponsible drinking.

Great Work to you and Patron!

Thanks Kleinman. I don't have any relationship with Patron (except on some Saturday nights ;-), but I wanted to share my thoughts on their initiatives.

They put on a damn good event, and they're generating buzz about it -- which results in more people signing up on their site.

This is pretty awesome... assuming you have the budget for it, and it's a good idea for members of your community to feel exclusive.

EDIT: I'd be interested in reading examples of technology community building, particularly for niche services. These seems like a much harder challenge.

Offline events are key, especially conferences. Get Satisfaction did this. We're doing it with work2conference for Cloudomatic. Bring your customers together in person, educate them, and connect.

Without commenting on the effectiveness of the method outlined in the OP, I think something should be said about ethics. Science and technology is advancing rapidly every day, and we now know much more about the heuristics our brain uses to make decisions, enough to abuse the corner cases and trick the brain into making the wrong one. Creating artificial scarcity in the manner described in the article is basically lying. Consumers end up assigning a higher value to the product than it deserves, and the market is made overall less efficient as a result.

What you just said is 100% true for the diamond industry. Their slogan "A Diamond is Forever" is created because there is very little resale value in a diamond, so they want/need their customers to keep them.

DeBeers has giant warehouses full of diamonds and trickle releases them over time.

You're right, in the literal sense, but your criticism can be applied to all aspects of advertising. In a perfectly rational or perfectly ethical world, advertising would simply be a fact sheet informing consumers of your product's relative advantages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhtTU-guW60

Hmmm, I was trying to think how you can do such a thing on a smaller scale. You must have enough people in one geographic area to pull this off. So either you are launching in only a few locales, or you have a large enough national following to make this work.

Also, having this much overhead for such a small group demands that those chosen to participate must be networked type people who are willing and able to broadcast their experience. Otherwise the experience will only have a muted affect, and not worth the cost.

Exclusivity & scarcity yield media buzz,PR and demand. What google did with the initial Gmail invites - the concept is the same, but gotta say - this is so much better than simply running a media campaign.

I mean, the 10 folks who got invited to the exclusive cruise - they'd so emphatically describe their experience to their friends / family (just like this blog post).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com