Mark (The Internet is dead and boring) Cuban has been enlisted as one of the contestants in "Dancing with the Stars."
Whether you agree with Cuban's seemingly endless stream of comments he throws out there, he is a good marketer. As a matter of fact, some of the comments he makes are a form of marketing. Think of "The Internet is dead and boring," comment, you couldn't buy that type of marketing power.
So now that he's on the Dancing with the Stars show, what is his motivation?
Dancing with the Stars, from a marketing point of view, is an interesting platform. What's powerful about something like this is it can be used to bring mature stars back into the spotlight, focus on current stars, or bring relatively unknown stars into a larger public forum.
While some of the motivation could be having fun, for Cuban I think it's more than that.
It seems his participation in the show is to extend himself as a brand; to bring himself into the consciousness of a larger audience.
What I wanted to bring up concerning this is the power marketing on the Dancing with the Stars platform - and it is a platform. That's what's amazing about it.
There aren't too many things we can access as marketers that are able to do so many different things like Dancing with the Stars can.
It has flexibility, appeal, entertainment, heroes, challenges, favorites, skill, amateurs, professionals, beauty, and a number of other attributes that allow people to insert themselves into it for a variety of reasons.
Each person is able to interact with the show and attain their purpose in the same atmosphere. That's an unusual ability the show offers.
The point here isn't the actual show, but what the show represents and does that makes it such a powerful platform for the participants.
One major reason I think it works across so many different motivations, is it puts celebrities into a position that they're like you and I. They are outside their professional element and have to start from scratch in a different discipline than they're used to.
People like to watch them struggle and strive to reach a level of excellence that anybody else would have to do if they started something new.
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