Download Word of mouth has been in existence for centuries in

Word of mouth has been in existence for centuries in marketplaces around the world. Before
the written word, it was the only form of advertising available. Once a customer had a good
experience with a product, he would tell his friends who would often buy and use that product and then
tell other friends – spreading the word about the product via a social network. Adding technology to
this personal interaction has led to an increased speed of product knowledge transferred from one
person to another. Tim Draper, one of the founding investors for Hotmail, (the free email product
which went from 0 to 12 million subscribers in just eighteen months) coined the term ‘viral marketing’
when he first noticed the similarities between the rapid adoption of the product via word of mouth and
the spread of biological viruses (Rosen, 2000: 20). Viral marketing describes any strategy (using
technology) that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the
potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. (Wilson, Web Marketing
Today, 2000) The newest “buzzword” within word of mouth and viral marketing literature is “idea
viruses”. (Godin, 2001) Ideaviruses are a type of a marketing plan that incorporates traditional word of
mouth with viral marketing and establishes strategies that create, encourage and feed ongoing customer
conversations about a product. Most ideaviruses are communication based and force the customer to
promote the product simply by using the product (for example evite.com). For this analysis, all of
these forms of creating word of mouth will be referred to as “buzz”.
This paper analyzes different examples of each of these techniques establishing which factors
are necessary for the widest product adoption and what products are buzz friendly. There are also
limitations to the type of product that can be successfully marketed with these techniques (despite the
largely publicized virtual marketing success stories), which will be explored along with case studies
illustrating successful virtual marketing campaigns.
As marketers in today’s technology age attempt to harness this low cost and fast technique,
they have begun to notice patterns of human behavior that leads to faster and more efficient product
adoption. Some companies have been extremely successful utilizing the power of buzz, and many
products are now considered a commodity (versus a luxury) by solely relying on buzz to promote their
product. An example of this phenomenon was commented upon by Keith Fox, vice president of
corporate marketing at Cisco who admitted that, “Our company started by word of mouth. There was
no advertising.” (Rosen, 2000: 27) Cisco was so successful at embedding a communication tool within
its product that customers became marketers for the product every time they used it, moving the
product quickly from a concept to an essential ingredient for digital communication.
Incorporate a Buzz Element Within the Product
The use of buzz within the online arena has become an extremely successful and cheap way for
companies to establish themselves, grow their brand and increase their customer base. Including a
buzz component within the larger marketing strategy development process, however, is only a recent
phenomenon and is not universally utilized within brick and mortar and pure-play organizations. Len
Short, executive vice president of advertising and brand management at Charles Schwab, summed it up
this way: “The idea that a critical part of marketing is word of mouth and validation from important
personal relationships is absolutely key, and most marketers ignore it.” (Rosen, 2000: 6) In order for
viral marketing to be successful, the marketing strategy must include a viral element from the
beginning. Not only must the technical aspects be developed and ready to implement, but the marketer
must also have a sense of how to seed the concept of the product or service within its target audience.
The audience must them be equipped with the tools necessary to spread the word about the product: an
easy way to explain the product; and must be encouraged to use these tools through offering
incentives; product endorsements by trusted colleagues; and be able to recognize the personal benefit
from assisting in increasing the customer base.
Criteria for Buzz-Friendly Products
To create buzz about a product, a marketer needs to start with a product that encourages
conversation by being is one of the following: contagious, evokes an emotional response, creates
visual curiosity, and/or becomes more useful as more people use them. (Rosen, 2000) The marketer
then needs to consider the audience for the product and how they would normally hear and transmit
information about the product. Analyzing the social networks through which word of mouth or word
of mouse spreads is essential to selecting which techniques to use. Many products are not interesting
enough to a large number of people to be established in the way that Hotmail or instant messaging was.
When establishing a marketing campaign utilizing viral marketing, the marketer must therefore keep in
mind the audience for the product and not create expectations about global interest in the product if
that is not feasible.
One of the major factors necessary for successfully creating buzz about a product is to create a
product that is interesting enough for people to talk about. Products that are not easily understandable
or interesting enough to encourage conversation will not be successfully marketed through word of
mouth no matter how the strategy is constructed.
There also needs to be a uniqueness to the product or some sort of vacuum which the product will fill.
Products, which encapsulate advertising the product within its functionality, will be more successful
idea viruses in creating buzz. For example, Passthison.com is a site that (with 6.7 million unique
visitors in July, according to Media Metrix Inc.) relies on games and electronic greeting cards to lure
users. Visitors can send a cute red heart to their love objects after handing over their sweetie's e-mail
address -- as well as other marketing information. (Business Week, 8/30/2000) Like Blue Mountain
Cards, the user must force his/her friends to use the service in order to receive the personal
greeting/egift etc. Those new customers are then encouraged to reply using the service.
Virtual products are especially suited to viral marketing, and in many ways need to be
committed to harnessing buzz as a critical part of their marketing strategy due to the medium itself. As
a non-interruptive technology, web surfers must take the initiative to find the product (website) –versus
having the message being pushed upon them- and often the customer is educated about the location of
the product solely by word of mouth. “’Consumers say the number one thing that makes them visit a
website is word-of-mouth, and that’s often an email from one friend to another,’ says Christopher
Todd, an analyst with Internet research firm Jupiter Research…Industry surveys back that up. Just 1
percent of Web site visitors click on banner ads, but between 5 and 15 percept of those receiving viral
messages click through or follow the links. “ (Zimmerman, 2001: April 9) Using technology to
enhance buzz has a proven success record, but the marketer is still responsible for getting the product
in front of the first customer in such a way that encourages that customer to spread the word to others.
In Rosen’s book, The Anatomy of Buzz, he discusses the essentials of developing a easily
communicated message about the product, locating the social networks and network hubs, seeding the
market with a preliminary version of the product (giveaways), and establishing some sort of incentive
for those network hubs and “connectors” who are able to give your product validity and popularity. For
example, Trivia Pursuit successfully utilized product giveaways and prominent network hubs to
promote their product with little paid advertising. They had prominent radio DJs ask the trivia
questions on the radio and give away free games to listeners who answers the questions correctly. They
also distributed sample cards in spring-break hangouts, in bars and mailed game to celebrities
mentioned in the questions. During 1984, 20 million games were sold with almost no advertising.
(Rosen, 2000:154) Seeding your market with your product only works with products that have
characteristics that encouraged conversation and are easy for a one customer to explain to another.
The sneak preview is also a traditionally utilized technique to create buzz about a product.
Nintendo utilized a prime example of this technique before they released Super Mario Brothers 3. In
partnership with Universal Studios, they released a preview of the game as a preliminary advertisement
for the film The Wizard. (as researched in David Sheff’s book Game Over). When Super Mario
Brothers 3 hit the stores, it outsold any video game in history and grossed more than $500 million.
Nintendo knew that they needed to keep their young audience talking about the product and in
response they continually ran the preview and employed hundreds of game counselors to help players
who called with questions or problems. (Rosen, 171)
Launching a Product Within a Social Network
All of these marketing techniques rely on human psychology and the power of social networks
and the influential “hubs” of those networks in creating buzz. Marketers who want to market their
products virally must have a good sense of their audience, how they use technology and how they
communicate to one and other. Interruption advertising has traditionally not had the same ROI (return
on investment) that buzz marketing has had in establishing a product. For instance, White Castle
hamburgers in 1921 were catering to a mostly male working class audience. In order to expand their
audience they hired Ella Louise Agniel as the official “White Castle hostess”. She used the
pseudonym Julia Joyce (which sounded sophisticated and trustworthy) and made appearances as
women’s clubs and charity organizations to inform her audience about the company’s high standards
and nutritional value of hamburgers. She would bring along sacks of hamburgers for tasting. Her
audience was then invited to take a tour of White Castle kitchen to see how food was prepared. This
strategy worked by 1940 the company was accepted by customers from all classes. (Rosen, 2000: 125)
By interacting with the social clusters that influenced a larger audience, White Castle was able to
branch out into other networks.
The published research exploring word of mouth techniques all focus on establishing contacts
and relationships with the people who are the hubs of social networks. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book
The Tipping Point, he divides these key idea spreading people into three groups: connectors, mavens
and salespeople. Godin categorizes these influential people into sneezers (those customers who have
enough social influence to seed the beginning of the of the virus). Godin separates this group into
promiscuous sneezers (those who would spread your idea for cash) and prominent sneezers who spread
your idea without your direct intervention. Prominent sneezers would include celebrities like Martha
Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Neither of these prominent celebrities would remain credible if the public
knew that they were paid to promote a product. It is there unsolicited support of certain products that
give credibility to their recommendations. The makers of Trivia Pursuit understood this process when
they send free copies of the game to celebrities mentioned in the cards. In order to engage these
influential “hubs” or “sneezers” in promoting a product, the must clearly see the personal benefit to
them. Often this benefit is clearly illustrated through the benefits provided by a larger rather than
smaller network.
Harnessing the Power of Network Externalities
One of the criteria necessary for having your hubs create buzz for your product is insure that
there is some personal benefit for them to become engaged in your marketing effort. In the case of
launching an ideavirus, this benefit should involve elements of network scale and effect. There should
be some increasing positive network externalities that are created by a larger base of users and your
hubs should easily understand this benefit. Email is a perfect example of this type of positive network
effects that directly impact the benefit of the product. The more people using email, the more
beneficial the email product is to the user. A second portion of this personal benefit equation is
including some other form of incentive for your hubs that is directly related to increasing the user base
of your product. These incentives could be in the form of some currency or financial incentive, but
they are more effective if the incentives are linked to the product (Godin, 2000: 178).
It is in the customer’s best interest to refer other customers to the service because in turn the
better service will be provided. As Robert Metcalfe’s Law states, the value of the network increases by
the square of its participants. Products that harness the power of these externalities become successful
buzz products. For instance, services like Napster are only beneficial if more users are online sharing
files. It is therefore in the customer’s best interest to refer friends to use the service. Buzz about
Napster spread quickly as it was marketed to an audience who was obsessed about new music, had fast
connects and an abundance of free time. All three elements led to great buzz marketing and created a
substantial database of songs that established a greater benefit for other users.
Another prime example of customers benefiting from telling their friends about a service would
be ICQ. The software is only beneficial if your friends are also using the service so that you can
engage in conversations. “When journalist Ami Ginsburg came to interview the young Israeli
founders, all the ‘marketing’ they could show was a brochure that they had produced but that was
hardly ever used…All their efforts are directed at motivating the user to spread the word.” ICQ used
the traditional email invite to encourage your friends to join, but the software can also scan your
address book and send all your friends invitation letters. (Rosen, 200: 197) As a communication
medium, the customer is forced to reference and promote the product in order to use it, and the
network effects increase as the customer base increases- creating a nature and renewable buzz about
the product. Within six weeks of making the product available, 30,000 people had signed up. After
six months, one million (Brooker, Ecompany. 1999). This is a true example of network externalities
being harnessed to increase the customer base.
Within each social network there are people whose influence is more powerful and covers a
larger range. Within Rosen’s book Anatomy of Buzz, he labels these people network hubs and Godin
calls these people “sneezers”. For this paper, these influential people will be called “hubs”.
Interacting with these hubs and providing them with a concrete, easy and personally beneficial way to
spread the concept of a product is essential to its success.
Barriers to Successful Buzz Products
There are a number of mistakes that marketers make when establishing a business plan that
includes viral marketing. The classic mistake is to charge a fee for a service whose benefits are not
easily identified without a large user base. If the product relies on a large user base in order to be seen
as beneficial (take instant messaging) than the product should be offered for a low cost (or free) and
profit should only be introduced once the product has established a large user base and the fee should
be attached to added features and not the basic product.
Buzz is a phenomenon that needs to be feed in order to stay alive. The marketer can sustain that
buzz by: keeping customers involved in product development and promotion of new features, etc;
involve new customers in the product and the buzz, and/or continue to improve the product.
Case Studies of Buzz
Works Cited
Brooker, Katrina. 1999. “No Sales? No Profits? No Problem”. Ecompany. February.
Rosen, Emanuel. 2000. Anatomy of Buzz. DoubleDay: New York.
AUGUST 30, 2000, An Epidemic of "Viral Marketing"
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug2000/nf20000830_601.htm
Godin, Seth. 2000 Unleashing the Ideavirus. Do You Zoom, Inc. : Dobbs Ferry, NY.