TIME EUROPE
January 15, 2000, Vol. 157 No. 2
On Spreading the Word
When it comes to selling merchandise, word-of-mouth marketing may be a company's best weapon
By JENNIE JAMES
Manufacturers, advertisers and marketers have long debated the best way to sell products. Should they simply bombard consumers with images of their wares on billboards? Gently coax them with clever slogans? Or resort to subliminal messages? Actually, argues Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz: Creating Word-of-Mouth Marketing (HarperCollinsBusiness; 303 pages), companies could do a lot worse than stimulate a tried-and-true marketing method that is guaranteed to have people buzzing and products moving: word-of-mouth.
Buzz, as Rosen defines it, is all the talk swirling around a brand, and generating it may move merchandise as no direct marketing or 60-second commercial ever could. The notion of buzz is not new, but Rosen warns its importance is overlooked in many marketing plans. Indeed, as consumers find themselves subjected to endless advertising through media ranging from traditional newspapers to the Internet, they will likely turn to one another for anecdotes and advice. The trick for companies, argues Rosen, is to tap into the web of networks — social or otherwise — that connect consumers. The Anatomy of Buzz suggests a number of strategies for doing so — advertising in a way that stimulates word-of-mouth, "tell a friend" promotions, or identifying the central person in a certain network and drawing that person's attention to the product.
If Rosen is a true believer in buzz, it's because he has felt its benefit firsthand. In the 1990s, when he was a marketing executive at the California technology firm Niles Software, he oversaw the marketing of the company's flagship product. Customers, he writes, "told us that they heard about the product not from advertising, not from dealers, not from magazines — but rather from friends and colleagues." The book is full of other examples and case studies of successful campaigns with a high buzz quotient — how Nintendo stoked demand for its Super Mario Brothers video game by stimulating buzz among children, and how adults became interested in a different kind of fantastic toy when BMW used a James Bond film to promote its Z3 roadster.
For all his enthusiasm, though, Rosen is the first to admit that buzz can have a downside. He is not a fan of the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thinking. Indeed, he notes that negative buzz can sink a product as efficiently as positive buzz can boost it. And he never loses sight of the merchandise's role: "Nothing in this book will help," he states bluntly, "if your product doesn't deliver ... "
What might prove really difficult to master, however, are the intangibles of the buzz equation: What makes a product hit the right nerve of the right consumer at just the right time? Without that element of timing, even those marketers who follow Rosen's advice to the letter in their attempts to stimulate buzz may just be creating so much white noise.
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COVER STORY
Special Report: The Future of Medicine
With the mapping of the human genome the process by which new drugs are developed is being turned upside down. These drugs will also change our lives
Brave New Pharmacy
Using high-speed robots and the secrets of the human genome, scientists are changing forever the way they discover new medicine
The Hunt for Cures
Genetic information could lead to treatments for everything from AIDS to obesity
EUROPE
Prague Winter
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See Vous in Court
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Going up in Smoke
Switzerland, land of luxury watches and bank secrecy, has a new growth industry: marijuana
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The True Blue Bush Cabinet
Its ethnic and gender balance is correct, but can a divided nation deal with the super-conservative bent?
BUSINESS
Transparency has its Price
Executives at many German companies are finding it hard to adjust to the more rigorous financial disclosure required by global investors
On Spreading the Word
When it comes to selling merchandise, word-of-mouth marketing may be a company's best weapon
Essay: Meat Matters
Critics of industrialized farming may be forgetting about world hunger, writes TIME's Rod Usher
THE ARTS
Rebel with a Cause
The real-life story of an anti-Mafia activist in Sicily makes for a handsome film with a political message
The Upmarketeer's Tale
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For Europe's freely improvised music, the only rule is no rule
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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