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Word of the Day: Hype
These days, it takes a lot of hype to catch people’s attention.
Whenever you see things on TV news, hear about them on the radio, and simultaneously see them on social media and advertised on every website you visit, you can be sure there is a lot of hype about them.
Marketers are good at creating and building up a lot of hype for their products.
Unlike in North America, it’s still common for celebrities to endorse products and help create this hype in Japan.
However, if you want to reach out to the younger generations and engage them with your product, you need to use social media influencers.
With their hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of followers, influencers can influence a lot of people.
There are two sides to every coin, and influencers with all of their power can also upset just as many people if things don’t go quite as expected.
This happened with Kim Kardashian recently when she announced her Kimono Shapewear Line.
Usually, the hype around anything she is involved with is astronomical.
That’s great because it creates free publicity for which you could never pay.
However, with the release of her Kimono Shapewear, things didn’t go as planned.
Didn’t anyone in her entourage ever hear of the term cultural appropriation?
It’s one thing for a white model to wear a traditional Japanese kimono and be called out for cultural appropriation.
It’s quite another when the most influential influencer ever attempts to claim the name of a traditional Japanese costume for her underwear brand.
This was the most recent event when hype did not attain the desired effect.
If the mayor of Kyoto sends you a letter asking you to change the name of your clothing line, you know the hype has backfired.
Oh well, the nine days’ wonder will be over soon enough, and there’ll be a lot of hype about something else.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 64.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.