Buzz Marketing: Is it the 'Right' way

Manasi Bansal
Batch 2004-06
IIM Lucknow

Word-of-mouth has been a strategy used by marketers from time immemorial, but the art of generating word-of-mouth has grown far more sophisticated since the early days of simple publicity stunts. Welcome to the new world of buzz marketing, where brand come-ons sometimes are veiled to the point of opacity and where it is the consumers themselves who are lured into doing the heavy lifting of spreading the message.

So what is Buzz Marketing all about?

Buzz marketing is the practice of gathering volunteers to try products, then sending them out into the world to talk up their experiences with the people they meet in their daily lives. The idea is that the more people see a product being used in public, or the more they hear about it from people they know and trust, the more likely they will be to buy it for themselves. So how and where is it different from the good old word-of-mouth?
It is, because in this case marketers plan the whole process, they create a structure around the practice and harness and direct the flow in which the word of mouth spreads. This benefits the company in more ways than one. The company not only ensures positive publicity, it also has the opportunity to measure its affect on sales once the so called campaign is complete.

Examples from India and the world

One example from India which probably stands a class apart when it comes to the understanding of the concept of Buzz marketing is the promotions carried out for the much appreciated television show "Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin". Although the channel unleashed with a set of effective teaser campaigns, it subsequently moved on to innovative tools of buzz marketing such as Jassi Pal Club, ringtones and the consumer testimonial campaigns which enhanced the popularity of the show and sustained the interest of the viewers.
Procter & Gamble too pioneered this approach on a large scale by recruiting hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic teenagers to create a buzz about their new products - some as mundane as toothpaste. They recruited a quarter million teens to talk about their products. Now they are in the process of recruiting mothers to do the same thing because they have suddenly realized the power of buzz marketing.

How ethical is it?

Sometimes the topic of buzz marketing not only raises issues dealing with strategy but also serious ethical issues. In most cases the 'agents' who volunteer to promote a certain product are regular citizens who have not received any financial compensation but get the products in advance of their release to the masses. This is done so that they can spread a good word in case they like it as well as give the company the required feedback. But marketers however blur these lines and alter this technique into a sort of guilt trip for the participants. For some, the ethical question amounts to just a vague twinge of discomfort when they realize a friend's excitement over a new product is part of an orchestrated corporate effort to create buzz on the street. For others, it raises the specter of a paranoid future where corporate marketers have invaded every last niche of society, degrading all social interaction to a marketing transaction, where no one can be certain of anyone else's true opinions or intentions. We are all intelligent buyers, and understand the fact that negative word of mouth is many times more powerful than positive word of mouth. But what we may forget is that the marketers to are aware of this fact, probably better aware than most of us. Thus by adopting the strategy of creating a buzz and spreading a positive word through the masses and to the masses are they not blinding our vision to make the right choice?

In the end it's about cutting through the clutter. When everyone starts to do buzz marketing, it will just add to the clutter. Then it will be about whoever has the most unique or effective campaign, whether it's a buzz campaign or not. It will be about what works. The rest would be just noise.