Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

1: they are the samething
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_marketing

2: you cant measure buzz
7:
https://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051019/bs_usatoday/pampgbuzzmarketingun...

Hi SR --

I'm glad you find the topic 'fascinating' . . . it IS pretty cool -- and a 'hot' topic at the moment in the marketing community.

OK, let's see if I can offer some insights to some of your questions:

1.What exactly is the difference between viral marketing and buzz marketing?
Technically, as FireFox points out, they are the same thing.

2. Can we measure buzz?
Here I respectfully disagree with FireFox as I believe this is extremely possible if you design certain response-mechanisms into a Buzz or WOM campaign. For example, I was involved in a campaign where the audience was 'long distance truck drivers'. Selected members of this group were provided with CD's that were 'registered' to them and they were incentivized to distribute these CD's to other drivers to use to log onto a targeted website. The incentive was that the more people who were driven to the website, the more 'entries' in a weekly 'truckers lottery' the distributing drivers were awarded. So the ability to measure the effectiveness of 'buzz' driving new viewers to a specific webpage was highly metric-able. The additional actions taken once they arrived there were further measures that allowed the campaign to be assessed in an objective manner. So it is possible, but it takes some planning, too.

6. What happens when word-of mouth acquires a reputation? And how does the reputation of a WOM carrier get affected? Can that have a bearing on the effectiveness of the campaign itself?
7. What about the 'ethics' issue in this type of marketing?
I find this an odd question because WOM or 'buzz' has been a marketing method since the dawn of time "Hey, there's a really nice cave over the next hill . . . wanna check it out?". What's different about it today is that marketers are growing more sensitive to (and, maybe about!) the fact that 'buzz' can be consciously and intentionally utilized in a promotional effort by design, rather than by accident if you will. Now anytime people who work 'behind the scenes' know more about something than the audience . . . there's bound to be at least an issue raised about whether the 'insights' of one group are being used to compromise the interests of another . . . and that's legitimate. But I contend that any WOM or Buzz methodology will work if it has a legitimacy rooted in the value that the marketplace will receive from the message being sent through that medium.

SR, I hope my 'two cents' worth has been of some help to you.

Bill

Dave Balter, the CEO of BzzAgent, is probably more knowledgeable than anyone else on this topic. In the course of selling the BzzAgent service to potential advertisers, he's been asked almost every question imaginable, and he has a presentation that addresses most of them. (It's been a few years since I actually met with Dave face-to-face, and he's probably refined the presentation even more since I saw it.)

If this is a serious exploration of Buzz Marketing, I suspect Dave would be open to sharing his learnings. Contact him through the website at www.bzzagent.com . You can tell him I referred you.

iimt08, as others have pointed out, viral and buzz marketing are basically the same thing. And I agree with you, it is truly fascinating, blogs are on the cusp of truly going mainstream, and that is fueling the fire, so to speak.

Just yesterday, the very first blog-only ad campaign was released: https://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/2005/10/budget-launches-first-ever-blog...

This campaign was conceived by bloggers, carried out by bloggers on blogs, and runs on blogging software. There is NO form of 'traditional' media advertising this campaign, there wasn't even a press release. Its success or failure will depend completely on the viability of blogs as a marketing tool.

Fascinating if you ask me, check it out!