Buzzing Buzz: It's Not Hype

During my recent eight-day meditation retreat, I must have slipped into and out of my Birkenstocks at least fifty times. About every thirty to forty-five minutes we'd switch from sitting meditation on cushions in the meditation hall (the beautiful hardwood floors means no shoes allowed) to walking meditation outdoors and vice-versa.

In the shoe-changing hall, I couldn't help but notice that everywhere I looked folks were sporting this distinctive neat-looking breathable sandal.

I made a mental note to check into buying a pair although I didn't know the brand name (uh, it's a silent retreat). Often as we're wont to imitate, (remember how well your parents "Do as I say, not as I do" admonition worked on you) visual buzz works even better than verbal.

Lo and behold, only about a week later, I see Business 2.0 is hawking Keen Footwear in their June The New Instant Companies issue (PDF, or email me for article).

In the article, Step 3 (of three steps) of building an instant company involves "free buzz marketing" through "leveraging the hype machine." The hype machine most lauded is the blogosphere. My honest visceral reaction to the story was "Yeechh! If everyone has these shoes, maybe I don't want them." (You can probably guess my visceral reaction to the use of bloggers as merely message dissemenators.)

So you've figured out how to design and build your hit product. Now you have to sell it. Yes, go to trade shows. By all means, meet as many potential customers as you can. But as an instant-company builder, you have to approach marketing just like everything else. That's right: Get others to do it for you.

In May 2004 the popular blog Cool Tools -- which gets 240,000 hits a day -- ran a post praising quick-drying Keen sandals as "a gift from above." Months later Diego Rodriguez, owner of a blog called Metacool, proclaimed, "All the cool kids are wearing them." Above Rodriguez's post was a photo of Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs hawking an iPod U2 Special Edition while wearing a pair of Keens. During the fall 2004 season, Keen sold 400,000 pairs of shoes -- while spending virtually nothing on ads -- in what is typically an off-season for sandals. "The goal was, get the shoes on as many influential feet as possible," says Keen's Van Dine. - "The New Instant Companies", Business 2.0, June 2005

Now this all assumes that blogs are about hype. Blogs = Hype Machines? Yikes! And in fact hype and buzz are distinctively different things.

Marketers don't need to abandon hype tactics altogether. They can be effective media tools. But they have major limitations. By definition, hype tactics are loud, aggressive, and short-term in nature.

Buzz, on the other hand, has nothing to do with noise; it's about seduction. It involves the marketplace in the dissemination of a big idea. It helps consumers learn about a new norm and can be sustained long term. It is, simply put, a marketing and media tool of a higher order. - Alex Wipperfurth, Brand Hijack: Marketeting without Marketing

Wipperfurth's book (highly recommend) succinctly charts the differences between the two (below):

BUZZ	HYPE
Is genuine	Is fabricated
Is co-created with the market	Is autocratic, leaked by the brand owner; the market is an audience, not a participant
Travels through grassroots, peer-to-peer communication	Uses mass media and staged events
Carries an authentic social message; it's news	Carries a biased product message; it's publicity
Is seductive and spreads exponentially	Is loud and aggressive
Is trustworthy	Can be easily distrusted
Is a long-term learning model	Creates short-term awareness

Now here's some more buzz. Authentic, seductive, news-worthy:

Check out the design award-winning Solemates to the left; "made from recycled newsprint, these remarkable and disposable slippers are eco-friendly and cost less than 50 cents each." Thanks to BrandAutopsy, a blog I personally trust to share ideas foremost, for the tip. (Buzz is also peer-to-peer storytelling.) BusinessWeek says: "In India [and Japan], it is a tradition to remove the footwear when you enter a house or building. As a host it is a good gesture to offer visitors footwear that is worn only indoors." To me, the Solemates evoke something exotic, natural and beautifully simple.

The Keen story isn't done yet because, I still haven't gotten around to buying a pair. And also because in an upcoming post I'll talk more about the core of Keen's buzz. (Don't believe all the hype about blogs either!) I believe that blog buzz was icing on the cake, so to speak, for Keen.

And I'm curious to explore this notion of "buzz as seduction." Can you be real and seductive?

Comments

[Tom Asacker]

Bloggers Take Cash For Coverage (from CMO)

The blink of an eye. That’s how long it took bloggers to sell out to marketers, and in another blink the middlemen arrived to encourage the deals. The Boston Globe reports that online marketing company USWeb pays more than 2,000 bloggers to promote the products and services of its clients, and that even the State of Pennsylvania is in the game, offering free vacations to people who blog on its tourism site. For the merchants, the payoff comes less from that mentions themselves than from the fact that the more bloggers link to their sites, the higher their sites will appear on Google’s search list. Paying $5 to a few thousand bloggers is a small price for companies to move up closer to the first page of results in a Google search.

[Elisa Camahort]

I don't know what isn't real about seduction. Sounds like you're equating seduction with manipulation...but can't the desire to seduce be sincere?

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Tom, I have no problem with bloggers writing about anything they WANT to including products/services they adore, but it's another thing to be paid to do it and never state your sponsorship openly and transparently. Fine, if you are paid to do so, but why hide it?

I am sure the Keen mentions are absolutely genuine. It's the tone of the Business 2.0 article that makes it the blogosphere sound like a great thing to USE for your own purposes and it's a piece of cake ("free buzz advertising!!" to peddle your own "hype".

I first heard about Pennsylvania's state tourism office blogging foray via Rolf Pott's Vagabonding site where he states: "An added perk for these bloggers is that the Pennsylvania state tourism office is footing the travel bill."
(http://www.vagablogging.net/archives/004272.shtml#004272)

I went to the VisitPA.com site and I love the "REAL PEOPLE, REAL ROADTRIPS" theme, but it's not obvious anywhere who is footing the bill. Are these 6 folks that were going to PA anyway? The other thing I noticed is the blog entries from the six bloggers from all walks of life seem heavily edited. Typically it is easy to spot different voices purely from their writing (i.e. give me a print-out of only TEXT from any blogger I read and I can probably tell you who wrote it; if nothing else I can distinguish between that two posts are written by two different people). But not so with these. They are eerily similar in style.

Elisa, I was asking an open-ended question. I think the word seduction does have a negative connotation as in I'm looking out for what I can get from you. I am thinking about relationships in general, with business just being one form. This is Wikipedia' definition: "Seduction is the process deliberately enticing another person into an act (see motivation). The word has a negative connotation, either seriously or mildly (and also used jokingly), and may refer to an act that the other may later regret and/or would normally not want to do." Obviously, seduction is often used in sexual context, and Wikipedia continues: "Seduction most commonly refers to the use of sexual desire in order to persuade someone to change their behavior to meet the desires of the seducer.

It is usually implied that the seducer is acting out of a motive other than love for the seducee, and that the object of the seduction would not ordinarily have engaged in such behavior."

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Here's the link to the CMO blog entry that Tom references:
http://www.cmomagazine.com/blog_view.html?CID=7971

And the Boston Globe story it links to:
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/06/26/for_a_fee_some_blogs_boost_firms/

Here are a few classic quotes from the BG article:

Linnea Sheldon, of Worcester, received nearly $200 in tickets to events in exchange for writing about them on her blog...

Jeff Cutler has never purchased anything from Dot Flowers, but you might think otherwise, reading the Hingham resident's blog...

Yes, corporate America has discovered the blog and found that the grass-roots medium for supposedly unadulterated opinions is also a powerful marketing tool in a country where about 37 million Americans read these online journals...

"People should be trained to take what they read with a grain of salt," said [Jeff] Cutler, 40, who also was paid to promote credit cards and car insurance on his blog, www.jeffcutler.com. "A person is not spending their time to throw something up on the Internet unless they have an objective or an ulterior motive. For me, it was making a few bucks and disciplining my writing."

[Yvonne DiVita]

Once again, bloggers out bloggers. Ads are fine -- if they are relevant to the target audience and they SERVE the blog's readers in some way. If... as a blogger, I am PAID to write something, I had better own up to it -- and, in fact, if as a writer, I am PAID to write something, I had better own up to it.

Getting paid isn't bad... leading others to believe you aren't being paid, is bad. There is no seduction in that! That's pure manipulation -- or, as close as you get.

For the most part, bloggers call it like it is, which is why I like blogging. If I can write a good, seductive blog -- one that entices the reader to do something -- good for me. If it sells a product I'm marketing, good for me. If it sells a product you're marketing -- I'd better say so in the post. Seduction is relative, just like everything else.

Good stuff for an afternoon's contemplation.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Seduction sincere? Sure. Sincerely selfish, manipulative, exploitive.

Most normal women don't want to be seduced. They want to be loved, respected, protected, admired, turned on...but seduced?...like with date rape drugs and overpowering muscular strength. No.

I don't want a product to seduce me.

I want it to sell me, convince me of its benefits and fair price.

But not hypnotize, tempt, lure, capture, brainwash, control me.

That's called addiction, obessesion, lose of judgment and voluntary responsivity.

Charm, ok.

Delight, yes.

Fascinate, right.

But not seduce.

Buzz can be insincere, buzz agents can be paid lying word of mouthers.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Yvonne and Steven,
Thanks for the feedback. I am leaning to thinking that seduction has way too many negative connotations. It's essentially selfish and not mutual. I think perhaps Wipperfurth was really driving more at fascination (and pleasant surprises are fine) as Steven alludes to.

My favorite part is the hype vs buzz chart is that buzz is a long-term LEARNING model, which tends to be mutual, not simply a quick hit.

[Diego]

I paid for my Keens.

I loved them then. I love them now.

If you take the time to read my post, you'll see that it's actually less about Keens and more about the idea of designing the marketing into your offering.

Definitely not hype.

[Reetthemo]

На днях подумал подарить своей девушке сюрприз, денег не хватало на золотой или серебрянный сюрприз, а цветы уже надоели. Решил попробовать каффами. Все узнать тут.