July 25, 2002

Building Buzz

With the stock market on a seemingly continuous downward slide, many marketers are finding that they no longer have the budget for expensive advertising. That's why the concept of "buzz," also know as "viral" or "word of mouth" marketing, is, well, getting a lot of buzz as a great way to build demand.

Sending out a weekly newsletter is a great way we've found to build buzz for our public relations company. Every week our newsletter readership base grows as current subscribers forward copies to friends who then subscribe. In an industry where customer referrals typically account for 50% of new business, the buzz our newsletter generates is critical to our growth. In less than two months, the newsletter has helped us land one new client and motivated two prospective clients to request bids.

In a cover story last summer (July 30, 2001), Business Week mentioned some fascinating examples of how large corporations build buzz-marketing campaigns:

· Italian motor scooter manufacturer Vespa hired bands of attractive young people to ride their motor scooters around and park in high-visibility locations like cafes and outdoor walking promenades. When people started to talk with them, the conversation would invariably turn to scooters. The Vespa riders would then happily pull out a pad and scribble down an address and phone number--not theirs, but that of the local "boutique" where you could buy your own Vespa, just as (they would confide) the rap artist Sisqó and the actress Sandra Bullock recently did. · Hebrew National hired "mom squads" to host barbecues in their backyards and extol the virtues of kosher hot dogs to friends and neighbors. · Hasbro Games "deputized" hundreds of elementary school kids as secret agents to share the virtues of their new "Pox" electronic games with friends.

The companies cited all tried to make their campaigns seem spontaneous, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. Buzz campaigns are planned down to the smallest details and the results are carefully monitored. For instance, marketers have been carefully studying how many downstream consumers they need to influence before a fad is born. Companies seek quantifiable results like those the VF Corporation realized in the summer of 2000 when they launched a buzz campaign for Lee Dungarees by contacting 200,000 carefully selected Web surfers. Within four months, 436,000 visitors had made their way to a specially created game site with incentives to check out the new jeans. That summer, Lee sales shot up 20%.

Regardless of the product, marketers have found that buzz travels through invisible networks that share some important characteristics. It's more than just Person A speaks with Person B who speaks with Person C. Rather, buzz works in a hub and spoke format. Person A may speak with five or six people. However, Person A's words get more rapidly diffused when they speak to a key influencer who shares the message with a widespread group containing other key influencers. Now, viral marketing kicks into high gear and the message spreads like wild fire.

Knowing that it takes key influencers to create buzz is the easy part. But, how can you identify key influencers and get them buzzing about your products or services? Get a piece of paper and draw two columns. Put the names of some of your customers "fanatics" in the left-hand column, and then write the things that get them excited about your product or company in the right-hand column. Soon you'll have a list that you can use to target your highest potential buzz-makers with some good ideas on how to motivate them.

Best wishes,
Patrick Galvin