A lot of marketers have some anxiety about jumping in on popular conversations to get attention for their business: What if we just look opportunistic? What if we don’t have anything to add?
But using what people are already talking about is one of the easiest ways you can earn word of mouth — you just have to do it in a way that makes sense for your company.
For example, TripAdvisor created review pages for famous places like The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and Schrute Farms from The Office. The pages clearly state that they’re for fictional places, but invite people to have fun with the listing.
That’s a funny and remarkable way to get people to interact with and talk about their product that feels more authentic to their brand than a “real-time” marketing scheme.
