This year (around 2011) marks IBM’s 100th anniversary and during these 100 years, when IBM was successful, the company said very little.

When things are going well, a business doesn’t need hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.

Young, inexperienced reporters and editors tend to be more impressed by what they read in other publications than what they collect themselves. Once the hype starts, it often continues over and over again.

No newspaper has received more publicity than USA Today. At its launch several years ago were the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. The residue of this initial hype is still so great that most people cannot believe that USA Today is a loser.

History is littered with marketing failures that were successful in the press. The Tucker 48, the US Football League, the personal helicopter, and the polyester suits. The essence of the hype was not just that the new product was going to be successful. The gist of the hype was that existing products would now be obsolete.

Polyester was going to make wool obsolete. The personal helicopter was going to make the roads and highways obsolete. The Tucker 48 with its cyclops eye headlight would revolutionize the way Detroit builds cars, yet only 51 were built.

These predictions violate the law of unpredictability. No one can predict the future, not even a sophisticated Wall Street Journal reporter. The only revolutions you can predict are the ones that have already started.

Did someone predict the overthrow of communism and the Soviet Union? Not really. It was only after the trial began that the press jumped into the “collapse of the communist empire” story.

Forget the first page. If you’re looking for clues to the future, look in the back of the paper for those innocuous little stories.

Over the years, the most publicity has been for those developments that promise to single-handedly change an entire industry, preferably one that is vital to the US economy.

Remember the hype about helicopters after WWII? The hype was that every garage would house a helicopter, making roads, bridges, and the entire automotive industry obsolete overnight. Did Donald Trump get a helicopter? Did you get yours? The Donald really got his.

Every once in a while, no-frills food makes headlines. This development is reported to revolutionize the packaged goods industry. The marks are out. People will read labels and buy products on their merits and not because of the size of the brand’s advertising budget. It’s all hype.

But for the most part, hype is hype. Real revolutions don’t come at noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6 pm news. Real revolutions come unannounced in the middle of the night and sneak up on you.

It takes a while, but many internet marketers learn the law of hype. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can’t second guess what the market wants and it’s hard to profit from all the hype.

It sounds easy, but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. This is the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Hype, as it is often the opposite of what appears in the press.

Finally, a great book to read is “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Ries & Trout.