The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You (and why no one else matters) [Kindle Edition]

Erika Napoletano (Author)

Book Description

Every successful brand in history is inherently unpopular with a specific demographic. Somewhere along the way, people felt they had to be popular in order to be successful, when in fact, the opposite is true. The brands playing in the space you want to dominate have already figured out the inherent power of being unpopular. In The Power of Unpopular, you'll discover the difference between flash-in-the-pan brand tactics and those designed to place you miles above the competition.

• Brand Personality: What's yours? Explore the importance of taking a stand and why brands become road kill without a distinct personality.
• Community: It's the number one thing that unpopular brands have figured out—learn how to build yours.
• Brand Advocacy: It knows no scale and your fans don't care how big you are. A guide for businesses on the proper care and feeding of their biggest asset.

Erika Napoletano's irreverent yet never insincere tone takes readers on a colloquial and actionable journey, producing concepts that readers can immediately graft onto their existing business strategies. Complete with case studies of businesses from across the country, this is the book that couples theory with practice, creating pathways for business owners of any size and age. Change the way you do business and live your life—become unpopular.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Being popular sucks.

Somewhere along the way, business owners got the idea they had to be popular in order to be successful, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Every successful brand in history—from corporate behemoths to your neighborhood coffee shop—is vastly unpopular with a distinct demographic, yet succeeds wildly with the right audience. Isn't it time to rethink "unpopular"? In The Power of Unpopular, you'll discover what the world's greatest innovators have always known: popular is the last thing you ever want to build a business to be.

Stop focusing your brand-building on groups who will never like you and learn how to identify the audience you want to serve. The Power of Unpopular simply—and bluntly—explains concepts that you can immediately graft onto your existing business strategies:

• Discover your brand personality and explore what you gain from taking a stand

• Find the people who will benefit from what you have to offer, and then tell them a story that they want to hear

• Become an approachable brand that invites conversation and a high level of customer input

• Build your community and get your brand shared

• Scale your brand in a way that ensures that it will survive its own growth

• Understand profitability—in both financial and emotional terms

Featuring real businesses from across the globe, this irreverent guide couples theory with practice, blazing pathways that businesses of any size or age can follow. Becoming unpopular shows you who you are and what you have to offer—and lets you tell all the naysayers to shove it.

Change the way you do business and live your life—become unpopular.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Power of Unpopular

"Being popular may get you elected to public office, but if you want to be successful in business, you need to understand the power of being unpopular. Erika Napoletano clearly and cleverly lays out the path to unpopularity, a critical new paradigm for business success."
—Carol Roth, Business strategist and New York Times bestselling author of The Entrepreneur Equation

"The dreaded 'unpopular.' Why the hell do we accord it all manner of awfulness? Whoever convinced us that popular = good / unpopular = bad, majority rules, end-of-story anyhow? In business, or in your personal life, it's finding YOUR right people that matters. That's inbound marketing at its best. Figure out whom you serve and what you do for them, and paltry issues like competition basically disappear! When you're unpopular with all of the right people—the ones who don't want, need, or understand what you have to offer—the ones who fall in love with you will eventually show up at your door. In her hilarious, witty, read-out-loud-to-your-friends prose, Erika is that idyllic best friend you can rely on to slap you back into a reality that 'they' never told you about."
—Laura Fitton (@pistachio), Inbound Marketing Evangelist at HubSpot and coauthor of Twitter for Dummies

"A brilliant concept, powerfully delivered. I've already ordered six copies for my closest friends."
—Seth Godin, author of We Are All Weird

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 1113 KB
• Print Length: 221 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1118134664
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (February 21, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007DIAFP2
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,496 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #85 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Direct

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars All the cool kids are doing it March 28, 2012

By Jason W. Womack

Format:Hardcover

Full Disclosure: I am a Red Head Writing fan, and I bought the book at FULL price the day I saw Erika speak at the South by Southwest book reading in 2012. (Friends buy friends' books!)

Of course, I was looking for the gems, the takeaways, and within the first 64 pages I found enough to apply them to my business. As a full time conference speaker, author and workplace performance advisor (or, is that three full time jobs?!), it is important that clients know what they are getting, when they get me.

If you're an entrepreneur, small-business owner, or freelance solopreneur, I highly recommend you read this book. At least the following pages:

26, 45, 61, 113, 168

Let me share 5 reasons I love this book:

She provides an outline to begin thinking about your popularity - or unpopularity - and what to do to enhance it. Early in the book, her activities, suggestions and stories make it easy to want to read more.

Move. Move toward and move away from plans and ideas. I breathed a big (and I mean BIG) sigh of relief when I realized that Erika isn't preaching AT us, she's simply sharing what she as found through her dozens and dozens of conversations and interviews. Remember, "shift happens."

She offers step-by-step solutions to one of the most interesting business problems I face: "What to do to let potential clients know I exist?" After reading the chapter on "Personality," I reviewed and changed up how I'm reaching out to people that come to our office as referrals. The goal is to engage, and she showed me how.

It's all about trust. I trust Erika to tell her truth. (Even if her truth is not your truth, at least you'll have someone in your hands who's willing to stand up for what she believes in.) The meta-message throughout this book is, "Figure out what you want and hang out with the people who are willing to push on you to do more of that."

Erika tells it like it is, and says what we don't always want to hear. She "reminds" us that when someone (a customer, a mentor, a friend) tells us we made a mistake and offers an idea of what we could to do improve that we've made it. Go, seek out the people who will tell you where you're off "just a little bit."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Title Says It All... February 29, 2012

By Joseph Ratliff VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

This book is more than a book about branding, it's about being honest with yourself and your business.

You're going to find out how to, on a DEEP level, resonate and connect with the people who mean the most to your business.

But the scary thing is, this will mean the rest don't matter. I know, sounds scary... but if you follow the advice clearly laid out by Erika in this book, it will not be scary any longer.

In fact, you'll love whatever it is you do that much more (and the people who love what you do).

Great book, highly recommended.

*This review is being given after reading an advance copy of the printed version.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Author Lives Her Brand July 11, 2012

By Dr Cathy Goodwin TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is a wonderful book if you *really* want to learn about branding or just get a reminder of the basics. The author's brand is lively, with a lot of 4-letter words sprinkled throughout; if I quoted most of her best lines, this review would be banned forever.

While the book is lively and fun to read, Napooletano does offer solid information and she "gets it."

For instance, on p 56, she says, "Brands should be inherently human." So if you make people mad (she has a more colorful expression), you're on the right track. After all, nobody is universally popular.

Of course, since I'm a copywriter in one of my other lives, I love her comment on page 63: Don't hire a graphic designer till you've nailed the concept and put it on paper. If you don't read anything else, this section will save you countless dollars, lots of aggravation and endless embarrassment and misery. Branding the wrong way is worse than not trying to brand at all; I've been there and done that.

I also applauded discussion of sharability and immersing oneself in a community It's hard to put into practice and I'd have liked even more specifics there.

I was a little surprised to see the discussion of business topics, such as taxes and licensing, in this book, and I'm not sure how they fit. The issue of scalability does, and her warning against becoming a commodity is critical to her discussion of pricing. (I just finished writing a post on that topic myself.)

Since I'm working with solo-preneurs on branding these days, I suspect I'll be doing a lot of referring to this book and of this book.

More About the Author

Erika Napoletano lives in Denver, Colorado and is the Head Redhead at RHW Media, a brand strategy firm that helps people get UNstuck and over those annoying problems that keep them from being awesome. She's been hailed by Forbes as a "spinless spin doctor" for her BS-free perspectives on business, marketing, branding, and life in general. Erika is also a twice-published author, including The Power of Unpopular (Wiley 2012), The Insider's Guide to Egg Donation (Demos Health, 2012), a columnist for both Entrepreneur Magazine and OPEN Forum, an acclaimed speaker from TEDxBoulder 2012 (http://youtu.be/S4DOJpB2I8o), and speaks at conferences across the U.S. on the inherent power of truth in business... or as she refers to it, the power of unpopularity.

When she's not traveling (and even when she is), she consults for some of the U.S.'s leading startups and brands you see in parking lots and on store shelves every day. From branding to building online communities, she helps companies talk to their audience, hold ongoing conversations, and convert those people into long-term advocates so that business owners can wake up every day and do what they love for whom they love doing it.

Learn more about her at www.erikanapoletano.com