A look at the elusive marketing concept commonly called "buzz." Here are some ways that buzz can be generated and the effects it has on a business or product.
In search of the most elusive force in all of marketing
If you're somebody with something to sell and no deep pockets for million-bucks-a-minute advertising blitzes, buzz is for you. Buzz is busy talk, the CNN of the street. It's hugely influential. Buzz is not merely onomatopoeic; it's a big-time, no-nonsense force. Once it's on the move, buzz is potent and widespread and lawless, which of course makes it irresistible. Brisk and a little unstable, buzz is a weather system that whirls into, and eventually out of, your life. Buzz is the Tornado Alley of communication.
Buzz needs an igniter--a circumstance, a surprise, a shortage, an inside scoop, a juicy tidbit, the right timing, a giveaway, even some ambiguity. The most celebrated igniter in our midst is Oprah, as both Texas cattle ranchers and booksellers can attest.
Buzz travels on the thrum of conversation; it's what large numbers of people can't stop talking about. More than anything else, word of mouth stokes buzz and keeps it alive. Like a faraway radio station, buzz can be faint and fuzzy and tricky to tune in. Ironically, that limitation only adds to its persuasive allure: the just-out-of-reach quality that characterizes buzz--especially incipient buzz, which requires that you chase the story--holds people in thrall. The key question for owners of growing companies is whether you can produce buzz by scheming and planning and plotting and contriving, or if you just have to wait to get lucky. I'd argue that cleverness and ingenuity catalyze buzz better than good fortune does, though the combo of all three is a humdinger. So let's turn our attention to the real-world rules that govern buzz and to how you can go about cultivating it and putting it to work.
For me, one of the best examples of the art and science of this whole process is the story of how southwestern cuisine took hold, as described by Patricia Sharpe in the February 1996 Texas Monthly. The beginnings of the southwestern buzz date back to the mid-1980s, when a handful of ambitious young chefs in Texas and California were experimenting with the local cuisine.
In Dallas, a group of seven chefs started meeting for dinner--potluck, of course--at which they cooked for one another and concocted ways to get noticed. One of them, Anne Greer, had an innate understanding of public relations, and it was she who made sure that Dallas Times Herald writer Michael Bauer was invited to one of those showcase meals. The first time the phrase "new southwestern cuisine" is believed to have appeared in print was on August 7, 1983, in an article by Bauer. Now the group had a bona fide brand name for their imaginative fare, and that, too, was a big help. Naming anything assigns it an identity and supplies an easy conversational handle.
Over the next several years, the chefs cooked for anybody who'd do a story. But while a handle and some smartly planned publicity can be the foundation for buzz, in this case the final igniter was very good timing.
The '80s, you may remember, saw a boom in the popularity of exotic food from Asia, Mexico, and Europe. Southwestern dishes, with their anchos, habaneros, and cilantro, were ideally suited to the gastronomic zeitgeist. Plus, people were just in the mood for new tastes. Thus the new southwestern cuisine became international fare.
Heather Howitt credits timing with helping to create buzz around her product, Oregon Chai, as well. Chai is a spicy, milky, intensely sweet tea that's been made for aeons in India and Russia and the Middle East. Chai first appeared stateside during the 1960s at ashrams and communes; by the 1980s it was featured on some restaurant menus and at some western coffee carts. In 1994, Howitt founded Oregon Chai Inc., in Portland, Oreg.
Although Howitt made use of traditional marketing and the time-tested handing out of free samples to create buzz around Oregon Chai, she also thinks its popularity was aided by the latte wave. Oregon Chai's revenues have rocketed from around $200,000 in 1995 to $2.8 million in 1997.
If anyone knows the formula for igniting megabuzz, one would expect it to be moviemakers. Hollywood and buzz have always been thick as thieves. Good buzz--a brew of rumor, hype, and enthusiastic reviews--opens movies with a bang. Bad buzz shuts them down faster than a vice cop on a raid, which is why studio suits and horn-rimmed statisticians spend so much time scrutinizing early audience reactions to a rough cut, to see where people tripped on the story line or find out if they noticed the costumes or liked the star. Of course, the studios pump heavenly sums into promoting their newest screen gems. (The advertising largesse for show biz puts it in a class by itself, except maybe for cars and Coke.) But independent, grassroots buzz does a better, more persuasive job for a song. It's all in the allure of the inside scoop.
Here's an example of how well it works: Last summer the biggest theater in my hometown got rid of a huge Titanic pop-up display in the lobby that you had to walk around to get to the popcorn. So that was a bad omen. There goes Titanic, we said, a real flopperoo, another Waterworld. But last summer I hadn't heard about Harry Jay Knowles, a self-described geeky guy in Austin, Tex., who runs a Web site called the Ain't It Cool Network, which, he says, covers "all stages of development of the films that you and I look forward to."
Knowles's Web site collects and publishes daily primo insider movie buzz: "Gossip/Rumor that'll make ya slobber!!!" "Star Wars Prequel Spoilers!!! Stay away if ya don't wanna know!!!" No "studio line" to salute or to "cloud our judgment," as Knowles puts it, just good old unleavened buzz, still warm from the oven. (Check it out for yourself at www.aint-it-cool-news.com.) Punctuation purists, beware: everything there is festooned with multitudes of exclamation points. That Harry, he's always so up!
