If there’s anything that goes some way to explaining Trump’s popularity in the midst of his quasi-fascistic views that reached a nadir with his call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, it is his social media prowess. Trump has more than 5.5 million Twitter followers and 4.5 million Facebook fans. He has a presence across YouTube, Vine, Instagram and Periscope. Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s highly-regarded former digital and social media guru, has said Trump is “way better at the internet than anyone else in the GOP which is partly why he is winning.” He’s a skilled live-tweeter. Trump’s Twitter coverage of major events has become a key part of his online presence.

He’s also easily meme-able. Trump loves to talk about how high his IQ is — and how low everybody else’s is. This despite the fact that nobody with any actual smarts believes an IQ score to be indicative of actual real world intelligence. In truth, Trump is often caught out by basic Twitter pranks. A particular trick he falls for, seemingly again and again, is retweeting photographs of well-known people when Twitter users dupe him into believing they are Trump supporters as opposed to, say, infamous murderers Fred and Rose West. He threatened to sue over that particular incident.

Trump doesn’t care for mainstream media, and he might not need it.

A question asked by the political commentariat is this: is Trump’s dominance of social media unnerving the fourth estate and traditional broadcast media? And that answer appears to be, to some extent: yes.

Regardless of what happens with Trump’s presidential campaign, he’s already a winner in the constant battle for public attention. Here are a few marketing lessons from Trump that any brand or political cause can emulate:

Know your audience.

Donald Trump doesn’t care if you love him or hate him. He’s playing to a very select crowd of voters who believe in his message and who want to support him. There’s something about Trump’s tough-talking “I don’t care what the experts think” attitude that appeals to Republican primary voters in 2015. Lots of Republican primary voters are feeling frustrated and are passionate to take back the White House. Trump is giving voice to feelings that are widely shared in that political party.

Know your brand.

Your brand needs to stand for something. Lots of people are not fans of Trump, but even people who oppose his candidacy find themselves grudgingly admiring the consistency of his brand message. What you see is what you get.

In September 1957, the Ford Motor Company released a new car named Edsel, which sold poorly and flopped soon. The Edsel campaign was thought to be a spectacular success but ultimately turned out to be symbolic failure in the automobile industry. The Ford Motor Company made huge mistakes in several aspects.

Edsel was released at the wrong time. In other words, the design of the car went against the market. Edsel was in full-size and 300 hundred more expensive than its competitors. Unfortunately, the country fell in the first and largest recession since World War Two in the end of 1950s. Ironically, small cars are more popular in economic depression because buyers are more concerned about the price and energy saving. No one would like to spent money on a brand –new product.

The marketing research of Edsel started 10 years before its release, a time period when the American Economy was prosperous and the demand of medium-priced cars were booming. The Ford Motor Company was eager design an appealing and innovative car to take the market share in medium-priced cars. However, the planning and preparation took too much time that they missed the best timing to sell Edsel.

More importantly, the design and quality of Edsel didn’t live up to the expectations of car buyers.

Before the release of Edsel, so many mysterious commercials had aroused the curiosity of consumers with only a glimpse of a hood ornament. Edsel was exaggerated to be the front of the era and high-tech so that the public expectation was unprecedentedly on top. But when they actually face the real car, they were completely let down.

Those who didn’ t purchase Edsel complained about its workmanship and grille. Edsel didn’t have its own manufacturing facility. Each Edsel had to be assembled in 7 factories and no quality can be ensured for the lack of a dedicated work force. The automatic “Tele-touch” transmission was complicated and hard to be fixed. Furthermore, its grille resembled a toilet seat, which was hard to be accept by most buyers.

The car was originally targeted at young professionals and middle class, building a premiere, fashionable brand. But its name Edsel never brought that image. Some market research about the name of the car was conducted but reached no results. The name Edsel was picked up by the decision-maker, in memory of the first child of the founder of Ford. However, Edsel tend to make you come up with the“straw that broke the camel’s back” instead of a engine and full-sized car. This negative connection of the name also made Edsel a failure.

Finally, Edsel took Ford more than 250 million dollars but it disappeared in 1959. Frankly speaking, the look of the Edsel, its dedicated marketing campaign and its support system deserve to be drawn on. If it could be put in a different economy, the history might be changed.

Many friends have complained about self introduction, especially when they enter a new company, take a new class, or even start a new account on a social website. Most of these fiends are not shy or sociopath, so how can they be worried about introducing themselves? Because we all want our profile to stand out from the crowd. But we are not sure whether it could be fascinating enough to trigger others’ attention.

As a matter of fact, the majority of our profile is like this picture: fade, flat and unintelligible.

Suppose it is the logo of a social network site. Do you think it is ridiculous? You would probably say the circle is not fascinating at all. Actually, the real version is like that:

Has it turned to be catchy when painted with red color and added with a few words? Of course it takes you less than 9 seconds to read.

In other words, the fascination of your profile is a matter of a photo and several words. The point is how to harness it.

Change Your profile picture, Which doesn’t mean you have to be a beauty.

The girl in the photo is cute but are you fascinated? Hardly. This profile picture makes she look like a nerd.

This photo is much more fascinating even though you cannot see their face clearly. But you can feel the passion and happiness of the girls, which attracts you to know more about their life and make friends with them.

Or try to show your sense of humor, neutrally. Your vice might be a fascination.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. — Woody Allen

If you can grab others’ attention in a few words, or even convey your philosophy in an interesting way, then your profile would be your weapon of fascination.

The trouble was that the Coca-Cola company had severely underestimated the power of the original Coke. Even the whole nation has a sentimental attachment to the iconic American brand. However, no one realized the symbolic value and emotional involvement people had with it, just like what they have with their mom’s apple pie. Once the brand with original taste was regarded as part of America or tradition, especially for its older customers, the loyalty was based on its original taste. The New Coke campaign was obviously taking away what they relied on emotionally, thus triggered the anger and boycott across the country.

More importantly, there was a flaw in the market research taste tests that were conducted: They did not tell the taste tester that if you choose one kind of cola, you will lose another. However, most testers assumed that the new kind was a supplement for the original kind. Their feelings during the test were quite complicated. For one thing, the young generation was more likely to accept the sweeter taste and vote for the new coke. For another, when they were told to attend the test, they were nervous and excited. They were afraid to be laughed at if they could not identify the difference between the new and old. So they tended to react actively to the new taste to show their sensitivity. On the other hand, if testers understood that in choosing New Coke, they would effectively be pulling old Coke from the shelves, they could have drastically altered responses. In that case, the result of the taste test was unconvincing.

Besides, the Coca-Cola company presumed that most customers would like sweeter taste due to the Pepsi Challenge. They assumed that taste was the deciding factor in consumer purchase behavior and the difference between the position of the new and old taste is only the sweetness. Therefore they picked up more youngsters to be the tester and assumed them to be the most important target. However, the society entered into an aging state during the middle 1980’s, the elderly who preferred to traditional taste was increasing while the idea of health and low-calorie was spreading across the nation. It was not wise to promote a sweeter taste as Pepsi did in the late 1970’s.

To sum up, the Coca-Cola company should have captured the feeling and attitude of customers toward the brand instead of relying on taste tests alone. Any marketer who plans a noticeable revision of a product must consider the possibility that buyers will reject the change. To prevent this possibility, manufacturers should use sophisticated qualitative and quantitative research rather on a presumption.

The campaign brings the story into the real world and attracts the fans to involve and interact. It can be termed as an alternative reality game (ARG), which is a game-like narrative played both off and online, which uses multiple modes of mediation to immerse the player in the game’s narrative.

Before releases，the ‘CIA documents’ , which focus on a Russian nuclear physicist named Dr. Leonid Pavel. were posted on Empire and Wired. These were later shown to be plot elements of the six-minute prologue.It completely aroused the audience’s curiosity and makes them feel part of the movie.

Christopher Nolan is a genius in storytelling, who leaks out the story little by little at the proper time in the light of what happens in the third movie. It has proven to be effective for such a movie with a strong fan base because the people who were engaged in the game became a community and started sharing clues and ideas with each other.

For another, The Dark Knight Rises’ marketing campaign takes good advantage of viral marketing and cross media convergence. Viral promotions can be delivered via videos, software, text messages, images, and flash games. It can also be realized through self-replicating viral processes such as the pre-existing social networks on the Internet.

The third trailer of The Dark Knight Rises was supposed to be a brilliant way to get fans in a tizzy, which could only be unlocked until fans gathered all the Batman graffiti that has been placed across the world for people to look out. ‘Fans can unlock still frames from the third trailer by submitting via Twitter or by email photographic evidence of graffiti related to any movement in support of the vigilante’s return.

The campaign also includes many partnerships with many brands and products (e.g. Mars, the Tumbler app, etc.) for promotion. For example, a video game named The Dark Knight Rise was released on the same day as the release of the film for the iOS and Android devices. Besides, one who purchases the brand’s product could win free film tickets.

Overall, the good story was necessary for The Dark Knight Rise to be a blockbuster movie, but the viral marketing strategy made it. The distribution of a film includes, the release strategy and the marketing strategy together bring the breakthrough in film marketing industry.

As marketers, niche blogs make it easier to monetize our blogs. Though the truth is that no matter what topic you choose to write about, there is already a million blogs out there in that niche. But your content matters. For instance, you are planning to write a blog about direct marketing, but you are not as professional as other marketing managers. But what is unique about you? Maybe you are a good scuba diver. So the way you can do is to write something about your scuba diving with your thinking about marketing. Then you have both targeted audience in both scuba diving and marketing. Your content is different from any others. Then you will surprisingly find that you have dominated your niche!

With niche blogs, you don’t have to come up with 1000 new ideas. You can start with three and approach them from every angle possible before moving on.

Originally drawn by wine, the bottled poetry, but ultimately gripped by the innovation in wine industry, I encountered marketing for the first time. The notion that marketing is to the real market what ornithology is to birds haunted me until I was engaged in the international wine program in Bordeaux Management School, France, 2011, which aroused my curiosity and passion in marketing by displaying the magic of marketing — how marketing initiated a revolution in the traditional wine industry and brought new life to the desperate old wineries.

Bordeaux has 5 first-growth red wines of comparable quality, but Chateau Lafite is the only chateau with global fame that is familiar to Chinese people by creating sales myth in China. What makes the difference is its revolutionary attempt to introduce modern marketing into traditional wine industry, while most old producers refused marketing-focused practices — adapting the old brewing technique to the new tendency or replacing the connoisseur sale agency with synergetic channels — which they consider would degrade their tunes and cultural status.

Joining the strategic planning for the Chateau Genoels-Elderen(Belgium) as the only non-European member in the team, I managed to cover my shortage in lack of knowledge about wine with field trips to these chateaus to check their terrains by myself and learned to taste wine of different tiers. I also resorted actively to the wine-sellers to grip traditional sales channels and market information to contribute our analysis of Genoels-Elderen. We repositioned it to fill an open niche — between Australia cheap bulk wines and overpriced prestige France labels — based on its inferior terrain, lack of cultural loyalty and A.O.C. qualification. Moreover, we made segment bulk wines in 3 tiers from low to high level and put them into different channels such as Winourism and E-commerce, reaching out to tourists and younger drinkers. This unique experience integrated with enigmatic wine gave me the chance to get my feet wet in marketing convinced me of my gift for marketing and made me decide to run after it.

Pursuing our career is like making wine. Only if we take the five steps — chose the right grapes, crush and press properly, ferment with the art of tempering, clarificate in the barrel completely and age perfectly — can we get the bottle of wine we want.