Creating Superfans by Brittany Hodak

Brittany Hodak

Author

Creating Superfans

Superfans aren’t just for pop stars and NBA teams. What if your customers loved your brand the way Swifties love Taylor or Drake loves the Raptors? What if they came back again and again… and told their friends to do the same? In Creating Superfans, award-winning entrepreneur and keynote speaker Brittany Hodak shares a powerful framework for transforming your business from a commodity into a category of one. Brittany has helmed fan-engagement campaigns for brands including Walmart, Disney, Amazon, and dozens of other global brands. Creating Superfans combines sharp business insights with entertaining stories from work with stars like Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, and Mötley Crüe. Memorable case studies from businesses of all sizes illustrate that customer experience, or CX, is the battlefield for wining — and keeping — customers. Brittany’s game-changing CX system, the SUPER Model, is simple to learn, deploy, and measure across every organization. Whether you’re launching a new business or running a hundred-year-old brand, Creating Superfans gives your entire team a shared playbook for tapping into the unmatched power of superfandom.

Semi Finalist

Plot/Idea: 9 out of 10

Originality: 9 out of 10

Prose: 9 out of 10

Character/Execution: 10 out of 10

Overall: 9.25 out of 10

Assessment:

Plot: Creating Superfans is an incredibly relevant, on-point guide applicable to a wide array of business models. Readers will find it full of manageable advice, useful tips, and handy follow-up summaries that break down the information into bite-sized pieces.

Prose: Deviating from similar guides, Hodak uses informal prose that perfectly matches her book’s tone. Readers will find the writing style makes the information understandable and enjoyable.

Originality: Hodak manages to combine serious business know-how with a lighthearted, accessible atmosphere, creating a fully original—and contemporary—guide.

Character/Execution: Hodak perfectly executes her goal through rich, meaningful guidance presented in an entertaining way. The graphics serve a purpose as much as they are visually appealing, and Hodak’s real-life examples simplify her model.

Date Submitted: January 17, 2023

Reviews

"If you do your job correctly, your customers will talk about you" writes entrepreneur Hodak in her accessible debut. Created as a practical yet inspiring template for readers to launch their business to new heights, Hodak fills the pages with eye-catching graphics that back up her tried-and-true methods to increasing customer satisfaction. Contending that “you can’t buy superfans, you can only create them,” she lays out a how-to blueprint for readers to develop their existing customer base —through shrewd tweaks to advertising campaigns, employee interactions, and more—and level them up into superfans—those “loyal, enthusiastic customers who will keep buying from you again and again.”

Hodak’s star player is the customer experience, and she notes that regardless of what a business says about its brand, the customers’ word of mouth is the most efficient way to spread brand awareness, even in the social-media age. Hodak continually emphasizes that a brand is molded “in every interaction with every customer,” debunking, in persuasive examples, the notion that it’s the end products themselves that speak the loudest. She writes with the authority and enthusiasm of a coach. Practical tools include her Ladder to Superfandom, which clearly lays out seven key steps businesses should endeavor to guide their customers through: apathy, awareness, attraction, action, adoption, affinity, and finally advocacy.

Organized for clarity and quick reference, and boasting a host of graphs, diagrams, and catchy acronyms, Creating Superfans is an easy-to-follow guide packed with general knowhow, real-world examples, and telling personal anecdotes relating to customer experience and brand building. Hodak closes each chapter with a bite-sized, comprehensive overview of that chapter’s information in the "Superquick! Rewind" infographic, offering snapshots for quick reference. Readers will be entertained by this aesthetically pleasing, informative reference guide that they will be able to refer back to for multiple uses, plus a motivational refresher when branding and growing their businesses.

Takeaway: A savvy guide to turning customers into loyal advocates.

Great for fans of: Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles; Heart and Hustle by Patricia Bright

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Hodak, cofounder of the marketing agency Bright Ideas Only, debuts with a breezy program detailing how fledgling businesses can earn loyal customers. Her “SUPER model” encourages readers to “start with your story,” “understand your customer’s story,” “personalize,” “exceed expectations,” and “repeat.” Breaking down each step, Hodak urges business owners to humanize their brand by sharing how life events or personal passions inspired them to start their company. As an example, she points to a metal business card producer whose automated responses to email inquiries recount how the company grew out of a model train manufacturing business the owner started as a teenager. Recognizing customers’ desires is key, Hodak asserts, suggesting that readers focus sales pitches on the lifestyle transformation enabled by a product instead of the product itself (for instance, she notes that a tool for boosting productivity could be marketed as creating more time for family). The conversational prose is tinged with humor that enlivens the shrewd business advice (on the importance of personalizing customer service: “Is it annoying having to send a paper statement to that one guy who refuses to go paperless? Of course it is. But it makes Jeff happy, so keep doing it”). The result is an animated and pragmatic guide to how small businesses can convince customers to keep coming back for more. (Self-published)

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