You can be the next big thing from Apple or Google, but can you beat the excitement or hoopla that comes from seeing the Haley’s comet or a blue moon?

Not a chance.

Haley’s comet is the authentic once in a lifetime chance of seeing something that you can never ever see again in YOUR LIFETIME, no matter how much money you want to spend. Watching a blue moon or a solar eclipse or a meteor shower or a close shave with a meteorite is a cultural phenomenon of astronomical proportion (Pun intended) which creates a lot of interest among mass as well as media. Can your brand replicate that?

Again, not by a long distance.

So the thing to learn from this is that there is a great deal of power in scarcity, about “once in a lifetime” things. As our entire brand marketing game is based on abundance and accesibility, some great brand marketing phenomenon can be created simply through the power of scarcity. Thats why the greatest TV commercial of all time, the Mackintosh 1984 ad, was shown only once in 1984 SuperBowl….never again.

Now how can we relive the magic of scarcity?

What if we can create an exclusive line of clothes, chewing gum, laptops…..anything, and promote it as if its an REALLY exclusive item (meaning : once its replenished, it will never be reproduced again), then wouldnt it create a massive buzz and pull? It must. If we knew that no matter how we love it and pay for it, this new line of stuff will never ever be made available again, wouldnt we stand in line and bark for our exclusive peace? Wouldnt we convey the message to our loved ones that get that stuff before it gets finished? It simply must.

Now through that we turn the entire game on its wheel. The brand brings this new line, makes it available to people, draw up a high margin because he is selling exclusive stuff, create this huge mind share and then use that mind share in future to earn more business.

But no matter what, he should never reproduce that EXCLUSIVE product line, because that just kills the magic. What the brand probably should do, is invest in the next big EXCLUSIVE thing.