2. Steve Jobs & Apple

In 2007, after spending an estimated $150 million developing the iPhone in secret, Steve Jobs was concerned about how to market it.

Steve Jobs knew that just creating a great product was one thing, but promotion and distribution were also key. This was why he had always been very bullish on advertising because he understood just how powerful it was.

He also understood how much publicity paid advertising could give a product. But he knew the best kind of advertising was always word of mouth.

So, what to do?

As a student of psychology, he’d spent his time continually studying people and their actions.

By doing so, he’d come to understand the importance of having people standing in long lines scrambling to get your products. Those long lines communicated three things:

1. Scarcity & Social Proof

People are hardwired to want the things they can’t have.

Just like how women are attracted to men who other women are attracted to, people are intrigued by something or someone in high demand.

A long line of people waiting for something or someone indicates one thing –  VALUE.

The question people not on the line would ask themselves is “why is everyone gathering to get it?” And “if everyone is on that line, then why am I not on it?”

2. Publicity

The media would see those long lines and write articles and stories about it. News channels would send their reporters to cover it. People would see their friends and family members on TV standing in those lines. And then they’d eventually come out to join them too because what the heck? Lol

3. Promotion

Strong publicity would eventually lead to strong promotion as everyone starts talking about it.

Even your competitors who would jump on this to try to make fun of you would end up spreading the gospel of your business unconsciously. And we all know what they say about publicity, whether good or bad.

This is a bit of an urban legend, but rumours are that before the first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007, Steve Jobs would go ahead and hire scores of people to stand in strategic positions on the lines in front of Apple stores.

Thousands of people were pictured lining up outside Apple and AT&T retail stores days before the launch date.

The iPhone was released and was a massive success.

Apple sold one million units 74 days after its release. Many stores reported stock shortages within an hour of availability.

Apple would go on to sell 6.1 million units before they discontinued its production the following year.

But this was not going to be the last time Apple would use the power of long lines to sell their products.

Before releasing the iPad 2, Apple knew they needed long lines – even longer than those who queued for the original iPad.

So, what to do?

Apple deliberately masterminded those long lines by refusing to allow pre-orders.

Not allowing pre-orders meant one thing – people would rush out to get them.

And the result?

In its first month, the iPad 2 sold 2.4–2.6 million units, and an estimated 11.12 million units by the third quarter of 2011.

Steve Jobs might have started it, but nowadays some die-hard Apple customers even go ahead and hire others and pay them to hold their place in Apple store lines.

Such genius!

1. The Beatles.

In the early ’60s, The Beatles were one of the hottest bands in the UK.

But just like today, the biggest music market was the US. And breaking into the US music market was super hard. Almost impossible for foreign artistes who were virtual unknowns at the time.

So, what to do?

Enter Brian Epstein. The manager of The Beatles.

Brian Epstein knew they needed to make a big splash if they wanted to be taken seriously in the US.

And from his experience with elaborate stage setups, he knew he needed to plan something big.

So, before they left the UK, the first thing he did was to hire hundreds of young girls. Teenagers mostly.

Then he hired amateur and mostly unknown actors who were instructed to dress up as police officers, paramedics and ambulance drivers.

He then went ahead to rent police cars and ambulances like moviemakers do.

Combining all of this, he created one of the greatest stage setups of all time.

On the day The Beatles left the UK to the US, around 4,000 “screaming fans” gathered to say goodbye.

Out of these 4,000 fans, most of them were the hired teenage girls.

The instruction given to the girls was pure hysteria – lose your minds once you see The Beatles.

They were told to just scream and go gaga.

How hard is that for teenage girls? Lol

The instructions given to some of the girls were to faint. And then at this point, the paramedics would dash in with first aid boxes, medical toolkits and stretchers to carry them off into the ambulances. Lmao 😁

In photographs of some of these stage setups, The Beatles would be on stage with fans screaming. In other photos, they’d be stepping off a plane with fans waving.

While in some others, they would be coming off a bus to thousands of adoring fans holding signs or wearing stickers like “I Love John” or “I Love Paul” or “I’m A Beatles Fan.”

As the cameras were rolling and the girls were fainting, the police officers were instructed to try to control the crowd. But not so much so it would look like the crowd overwhelmed them.

Remember, none of this was real.

But the packaged videos were so damn convincing that several weeks before the Beatles would arrive America they were sent to every major broadcast studio and the anticipation was fever crazy.

The raw genius of this man 😁

The result?

When the Beatles arrived in America, over 3,000 fans welcomed them at the airport.

And two days later, when they made their television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, it is estimated that 73 million Americans in 23 million households watched them live. About 34 per cent of the American population at that time.

Biographer Jonathan Gould writes that, according to the Nielsen rating service, it was “the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program”.

Even though the first girls who fainted for them were acting, eventually thousands of young American girls and girls all over the world would go crazy and faint over and over again for them

The Beatles would go on to become the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 600 million album units worldwide.

They also held the first-ever stadium rock concert – 55,000 tickets sold out within hours.

This is a link to the concert.