One of the cornerstones of powerful marketing is to do things that people have a strong reaction to, positive or negative. You want real emotion, ‘I love them/that!’ or ‘I hate them/that’, you don’t want, ‘Meh, they’re ok, I guess.’

If people have no feelings about you, your category, your brand, your products then there is zero emotional investment. You are invisible. So Why Be?

Nau struck a nerve. Witness the love/hate language in the media and blog response to their announcement that they were shutting down. “Audacity”, “tragedy”, “clueless”, “devastated”…the language is concrete on both ends of the love/hate spectrum. Few people are indifferent.

Nau’s marketing and PR is just one of the many things they did exceptionally well. Actually it was great…and I’ll leave the punditry to everyone else.