9 Ways to Stimulate Buzz

1
9 Ways to Stimulate Buzz
A Key Strategy for Connecting with Gen X
Emanuel Rosen www.emanuel-rosen.com
2

• Buzz. All the person-to-person communication
  about a brand

3
Created using InFlow
4
Why Is Buzz Important?

• Customers can hardly hear you
• Customers are skeptical
• Customers are connected

65 say they feel constantly bombarded with too
much marketing and advertising. Source
Yankelovich, April 2004
5
Focus on Gen X

• Xers have been marked by skepticism
• best-educated and most technologically savvy
  generation in history
• 28 of Gen Xers who use the Internet, rated
  something online.

• Lancaster Stillman, When Generations Collide
• Multichannel News, March 21, 2005 v26 i12 p55
• Pew Internet American Life Project May-June 04

6
Listen / Measure Buzz
Source BlogPulse.com
7

• Technorati.com, BlogPulse.com
• The words people are using
• What are people talking about?
• Listen offline as well

35.1 of those visiting blogs are between the
ages of 25 and 44 Source Nielsen/NetRatings,
May 2005
8
2. Add a contagious element to your product or
service
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
3. Stimulate Interaction
12
(No Transcript)
13
Our youth are, in effect, telling us that in
their experience most people really arent
trustworthy. Perhaps thick trustconfidence in
personal friendsis as strong as ever, as some
Gen Xers believe. However, thin trustthe
tenuous bond between you and your nodding
acquaintance from the coffee shop, that crucial
emollient for large, complex societies like
oursis becoming rarer. Robert Putnam, Bowling
Alone
14
We stand against shill and undercover marketing,
whereby people are paid to make recommendations
without disclosing their relationship with the
marketer. Word of Mouth Marketing Association
Code of Ethics www.womma.org
15
4. Show up in surprising places
16
The mistake that people have made since is that
theyve tried to do these things with products
that dont lend themselves to it
you need to find ways of doing things that
relate to the product so that youre reinforcing
the concept and the message behind the product
17
5. Give Us Something to Talk About
18
(No Transcript)
19
6. Make it Easy to Spread the Word
20
(No Transcript)
21
7. Work with Network Hubs

• Hubs -- Individuals who talk more than average
  about a certain category.
• Characteristics of Hubs
• How to Identify Hubs?
• How to Work with Network Hubs to spread the word
  about your company?

22
Characteristics of Hubs

• Ahead in adoption
• Connected
• Travelers
• Information Hungry
• Vocal
• Exposed to media

23
Identifying Hubs

• Let them identify themselves
• By category
• Spotting them in the field
• Identify hubs through surveys

• Sociometric methods
• Informants ratings
• Self-designating methods

24
Its cool to know about stuff before other
people Caitlin Jones, 16, Tremor
memberSource Forbes, Feb. 2004
25
(No Transcript)
26
(No Transcript)
27
(No Transcript)
28
8. Seed the Networks
29
We really had to plant separate seeds in each
area
Brian Maxwell, co-founder PowerBar
30
9. Involve

• The more we think about a product
• Consumer participation / co-creation
• Take consumers behind the Scenes

31
Subservientchicken.com
32
Additional Resources

• Everett Rogers. Diffusion of Innovations
• The Influentials by Keller Berry. (also
  Weimann)
• Creating Customer Evangelists/ McConnell Huba
• Dina Mayzlin at Yale. David Godes at Harvard
• The One Number You Need to Grow Harvard
  Business Review, December 2003.
• www.emanuel-rosen.com
• www.Womma.org
• www.vbma.net