Consumers are increasingly resistant to traditional interruption (see chart below) marketing. However, companies cannot give up spending on this type of advertising altogether. This is where lies the paradox. Companies cannot go without it, but most of the time they cannot grow with it either.

For the last century or so, one could look at a company’s advertising budget and know whether it would get big or small. Until now, companies like Procter & Gamble managed to gain an edge with great aggressive advertising, get return on investment and grow profitably.

Old-fashioned advertising is not going to disappear overnight, but it is only a matter of time before marketing CEO’s, investors and managers become critical of their huge advertising budget.




The industry needs new ways to do it. Which one will be able to generate consumer awareness and receptivity? The idea of buzz marketing is to have consumers do the job. If a good product speaks for itself, buzz marketing helps build a virus and make it spread, from one consumer to the next (see chart below).





With some 300 million copies sold worldwide, Harry Potter is a blockbuster. From the start, it has not benefited from huge advertising campaigns. It just took off, thanks to word of mouth.

Now Pottermania is cleverly fuelled thanks to some careful spells of buzz marketing. The editor does so by letting very small amounts of information out on the Harry Potter official website, fake information leaks are posted on personal blogs and fan forums. The press acts as an echo and relays rumours.

Let’s have a look at the inner workings of that buzz.

A. The power of buzz

The “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” theory, formulated in the 1960’s by sociologist Stanley Milgram, is a powerful theory about social networks.
According to his theory , all of us know Kevin Bacon six degrees of acquaintance away. In other words, the entire world knows each other through acquaintances with six degrees of separation. Buzz marketing’s goal is to take advantage of this fact to spread messages widely. Let us have a closer look at what mechanisms are at work here.


1. What is buzz marketing?

“Buzz marketing also known as viral marketing or relationship marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message” .

The expression “buzz marketing” made its first appearance circa 1997 with the rise of the Internet and web marketing. It was a term used to describe the phenomenon of the Microsoft’s free email service Hotmail, which spread with the rapidity of a virus from naught to twelve million subscribers in only eighteen months.


2. The mechanisms at work

Numerous campaigns like for Volkswagen’s New Beetle, Budweiser’s ‘Whassup’ campaign, the “Friends” TV series, and the Blair Witch Project were all surprising by the scope and intensity of their success in spite of their initial low profile approach and sometimes tight budgets.

Buzz marketing is what made it work. A well-orchestrated word of mouth has allowed maximum impact with minimum means.
The concept is pretty simple. The virus is inoculated to a carefully chosen target, who then acts as a vector of the message towards a great number of people, who often share similar interests.




Hence, the message does not come from outside the group, but from the inside. It appears like a recommendation in the eye of the people who are contaminated by the virus.

a) Sneezers, the heart of buzz

"We're arming consumers with the tools or knowledge they can take back to their peer groups so they'll be perceived as being in the know. Ultimately, the brand benefits because an accepted member of the social circle will always be far more credible than any communication that could ever come directly from the brand."

- Scott Stern, senior vice-president at Bates USA

The first step of a buzz marketing campaign is to define its target (the end users) precisely. Then, it is crucial to find who are the most influential people among this target group. This step is critical, for they are the ones on which the efficiency of the buzz relies.

These most influential people are the Trendsetters (also called Evangelists). They are the ones who set the example, who create a trend. At this stage, a brand’s goal is to set up a one-to-one personalized campaign to attract and seduce them. These people can be employees, vendors, and consumers — anyone who grows an emotive connection with it.

Apple, for instance, has many passionate evangelists, who work at converting Microsoft Windows users. The resulting new converts are the Early Adopters. Marketers can also target Influencers, who are often experts known for giving good advice, and who rely on rational arguments, unlike the more emotive Evangelists. The Early Adopters then spread the message to the Mass Adopters, who massively adopt the trend. They tend to be less open to novelty, and have a wait-and-see attitude. They do not like to be too different from the mass.

The key factor of success for the word to spread is the amount of respect and trust Mass Adopters have in Influencers and Evangelists, who tend to be intelligent and charismatic characters. Mass Adopters rely on them to filter and analyze the data for them.



The Parisian shop Colette is a perfect example of trendsetter. This shop sells its products in a grandiose setting. Fashion is like a ceremony there. Early adopters converge to this store to get in the know of what’s hot and what’s in. They go there to buy beautiful and uncommon items that will generate want in their entourage. Hence, the buzz is sparked.

b) The transmission channels

Buzz does not travel through a particular medium but is carried through all of them indiscriminately. This is why a key factor of success is to set up a multi-channel approach. Journalists, friend networks, blogs, websites and opinion leaders must spread the word.

Buzz marketing is about the story one can tell about the product, more than the product itself.



3. Buzz marketing fulfills the needs of a new consumer

Buzz or word-of-mouth marketing influences more people to buy, or not to buy products and services, than most other forms of marketing. Why is it so powerful?

a) Buzz plays on the need to share

Consumers have grown to be adults. They are well informed and cunning. They compare prices and level of service. In a noisy environment, the only people they listen to are acquaintances, who are experts in their own field of consumption. And inevitably, some acquaintances will be mavens. Mavens are people who crave to spread their new findings or their latest good buy.

Apple Computer is a nice example of the need to share.

Thanks to its strong identity and brand, Apple has managed to create in the heart of the consumer such an emotional connection that it is not uncommon to find Macmaniacs, who admit to loving their Mac . Mac addicts are in love with their Mac, and love to talk about it.

Hence, they are great evangelists, who aim at converting their entourage, by making them “switch” from the PC world, epitomized by Microsoft Windows, to the community of Mac users. Apple’s recent advertising campaigns “Think Different” and “Make the switch” are clearly an echo of the religious passion users have for their macs.




The secret of this is undoubtedly the quality of Apple products, which are not only functional but beautifully designed. A mac evangelist knows their switch will delight his converts. There is thus an “ego” incentive for him. Also, as an expert, he has no reason to lie because his reputation is at stake. This makes the buzz more founded and trustworthy.

According to a study made by Jupiter Communication in 1999, 57% of sales are the result of recommendation (42% for press, 24% for online advertising). Another study by Euro RSCG in 2005 estimates 42% of under 30’s admit to being influenced by their peers in their brand choices.

The challenge for brands is to take advantage of his dynamic by transmitting their message in a “peer to peer” mode (2), rather than the usual top-down (1).





b) People seek to remain on the cutting edge.

Our consumerist societies have always valued people in the know, people who have a sixth sense to decrypt trends. But what is new, is that is has become increasingly fashionable to be fashionable. More people than ever have become actors of trends, instead of just waiting to follow them.

However, this same consumerist society also values symbols of belonging, that make individuals part of a community, be it skaters, painters or geeks. There lies the paradox: to be trendy and original, yet recognized by peers as being part of a larger community. Nobody wants to be the unique representative of a trend. People want to share, to belong. These two contradictory tensions thus immensely contribute to spread the buzz.

Brands have hence had the idea to appeal to this kind of behaviour, and some products have been born again, thanks to this method. The famous hip-hop band « Outkast » had a huge hit with a song in which they sang “Shake it like a Polaroid picture”. Polaroid immediately identified the opportunity and contacted the band’s manager. The camera-maker gave away cameras to Outkast band members, who used their cameras on stage to take pictures at the Grammy Awards 2003. After the actual show, the Polaroid cameras went from hand to hand, and celebrities (notably Paris Hilton, Macy Gray) took pictures of each other all night long. As a result, Polaroid cameras were all over the official photographies of the event. The Polaroid experience was all over the tabloids overnight.



The buzz was immediate. Polaroid had taken advantage of the Grammy Awards to revive its fading image. The company saw its brand awareness surge to 58%. In the following two months, Polaroid.com got more traffic than the whole previous year, and online sales increased by 90%.

Ad Age Magazine voted the Polaroid buzz campaign in the Top Three most un-traditional advertising campaigns of 2003.

c) Consumers enter a win-win situation

Traditional advertising functions like a game, with its winners and losers. Every time a product attracts consumer attention, the company wins over a part of his time, and the consumer loses a bit of his time. If the message he has listened to is irrelevant for him, he has doubled his losses.

Buzz marketing parts from this logic. A new game emerges in which everyone wins. First, the consumer wins by recommending a product. It reinforces his reputation among the hive as a useful source of information. And because he respects his peers, he will refrain from recommending products that will not make his life better.
Then, not only the receiver obviously gains a valuable recommendation for himself, but he in turn gains the ability to be a contaminator, transmit the message and reinforce his own reputation.
Finally, the company wins over new customers, who will be receptive to its message in the future.

The other strength of buzz is its accuracy. With traditional advertising, brands bombard the public with a more or less targeted message, hoping that some will eventually hear the noise.

Buzz works in a different way: by definition, it spreads only to those who are concerned by the message. On top of that, the contaminator personalizes the recommendation and adds his user-experience. The superiority in accuracy of buzz compared to TV or radio ads is striking.


In short, the buzz formula :

1. Make a remarkably good/different/bigger … product (e.g. Apple)
2. Make the message effortlessly transferable (e.g. Hotmail)
3. Choose the hive well
4. Make sure the transmitters gain from transmitting the virus (ego)
5. The virus must persist: enough people must be using the product for the others to feel left-out losers (e.g. the Palm Pilot, mobile phones)

B. Limitations of buzz marketing

With such success stories as Hotmail or the Blair Witch Project, viral marketing can sometimes be perceived as a miracle solution. Advertising budgets are often the first ones to be squeezed during difficult times, and the low-costs of a buzz campaign can seem extremely attractive for brands.

Unfortunately, miracles do not exist, and buzz campaigns are more art than science, complex to set up and track.



1. Viral marketing does not work for bad products

It is an obvious truth, but a truth nonetheless: no matter the marketing campaign, a bad product will not sell. The success of products like Apple’s iPod, Volkswagen’s New Beetle, the Palm Pilot or Microsoft’s Hotmail are primarily linked to the high quality of these items. Quality will make the buzz last and will make sure the buzz is a positive one. Bad consumer experience can turn the buzz into a negative one.
Viral marketing’s role is really to amplify a sleeping word of mouth.


2. The result of a buzz campaign is difficult to anticipate

The success of buzz is always prone to uncertainty. A certain number of rules of thumb and techniques are here to increase the odds of success in the spark and spread of a buzz. However, word of mouth is tricky art, rather than an infallible science. A key factor of success is to outsource some parts of the communication to consumers. However, this amounts to losing some share of control over the message, with sometimes some unforeseeable side effects.


3. Results are not easy to measure

To launch a buzz campaign is one thing, but to measure its effects and effectiveness is another. Where companies rely on consumers to relay their message, traditional tools for measurement become obsolete.
Some lead agencies like Supergazole, Culture Buzz or DMC, have begun setting up statistical tools based on the number of downloads and transmission of a viral ad, but overall, the killer tools have yet to be invented.

C. Street and Guerrilla marketing: the new national sports

1. Definition

a) Street marketing

Street marketing is an advertising campaign set in the street, in close contact with the consumer. This kind of campaign has been around for years already, but its use tends to be more and more diverse.
Reintroduced a few years ago to communicate with youth consumers who seemed oblivious to TV and radio ads, street marketing has now extended to every category of consumer.
Mainly utilized for product launches or to communicate strange alternative messages, street marketing today can be seen in different forms: sticker distribution, flyers, gadgets, samples, and events.

b) Guerrilla marketing

Confronted with Napoleon’s army of conscripts, the invaded Spanish responded with ambushes and traps, which was highly unconventional at the time. With very little means, the Spanish rebels were able to inflict heavy losses to the “Grande Armée”. It was thus called “the little war”, which translates in Spanish into “guerrilla”. Guerrilla marketing is the philosophy of low budget unconventional warfare, applied to marketing.

Guerrilla marketing, as described by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1982 book Guerrilla Marketing, is “an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget”.
The success of a guerrilla marketing campaign is based on the degree of creativity involved in the concept, and the ephemeral aspect of it that will surprise viewers and trigger a buzz. Guerrilla marketing uses original, unconventional methods to reach the same objective as those of traditional advertising.

The TriBeCa alternative marketing agency carried out a guerrilla campaign in September 2006 for Lee Jeans in Paris. To promote the opening of a new store in rue des Rosiers, the French agency disseminated denims (and denim accessories) all around the neighbourhood. In the jeans’ pockets, passers-by could gather flyers. This campaign has not gone unnoticed, and several websites have talked about it, which shows that this type of campaign is hype.

The concept proved appropriate in this particular case: passers-by were invited on the spot to visit the new Lee store, an immediate transformation that adds up to the buzz created by the new opening.







Here are interesting examples of guerrilla marketing:





2. The reasons for success

a) Brands can reach untouchable targets

Street and guerrilla marketing enable brands to communicate with their targets in their own familiar environment, during events or in moments when they are relaxed and receptive, ready to enjoy a product in a laid-back way.

These alternative marketing techniques are effective when the targets are busy and time-conscious people, such as businessmen and young professionals. They are highly unstable and volatile, interested in brands and their goings-on, and very much aware of the latest marketing techniques. These characteristics make them difficult people to catch unawares.

b) Big impact, low budget

The cost of this kind of campaign turns out to be very affordable, especially when compared to the cost of a TV or press ad campaign. “The key factor of success for street marketing lies more in its originality and the creativeness of the event, rather than in the budget”, says Delphine Manceau, professor at ESCP-EAP in Paris.




--- GO TO PART 3