Baby, Baby, Baby

I may have come down with Beiber Fever yet again over the past few days. My Twitter feed has been dominated with Justin Beiber RT'ing hundreds of fans and their excitement regarding the release of his latest single, Boyfriend. Now I adore JB but I normally don't get caught up in the hype of music releases, I listen to the radio and that's how I hear new music. But from the hashtag trends of #20days counting down to the last #48hours I was hooked. I looked up the 15 seconds of the song he leaked on Ellen, I joined in the countdown. The hype around this release was massive, and that's just on Twitter alone. There was a worldwide trend just about everyday, counting down from #20days. Today alone I saw from #12hours all the way down to #2minutes trending just waiting for iTunes to release Boyfriend. I also saw iTunes trending when there was a slight delay with the release. The power of Beliebers. 
I swear this blog has a point apart from Justin Beiber, and that point is hype. 
I get caught up in just about everything, regardless of what it is. My friend Marie & I lined up for the iPhone 4 outside Optus in the city all because of hype. We were walking home from Uni, saw 4 people lining up and we just couldn't stop staring. We got ourselves so hyped up that we could be lining up for the iPhone that we went home, prepared ourselves, and we're in the top 20 of people lining up. Hype.
My sister bought JB's latest single as soon as she got home, just so we could listen and join in on the hype. 
Basically, if something has a clever marketing campaign or simply gets enough hype I'll be first in line for it. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. Have you ever been caught up in the hype of something?

Apple Lover

I learnt about authentic brands today during my Management of Brands lecture with Cullen Habel. Apple came up often as an excellent example of an authentic brand, something with quality leadership, a passionate artisan (being Steve Jobs) behind the brand. 
Throughout the lecture I reflected upon how I became such a lover of everything Apple. My first Apple purchase was a first generation, pink, iPod Mini. Now I own an iPhone 4, iPad 2, iPod Classic, and my pride and joy a MacBook Pro.
Apart from word of mouth recommendations the only research I conducted before purchasing my MacBook Pro was watching this YouTube video. Despite the ads being a little old they are still as relevant as ever. 
Apple is selling the benefits of their products rather than the features. Rather than saying it comes with a magnetic power cord they state it if the cord is tripped over it will *pop* out & not bring the laptop crashing to the ground. 
Watch it and then buy yourself a MacBook Pro. It will be the best decision you ever make, I promise.

Apple just works.