This was the only book I managed to finish over the Christmas – New Year period, after starting out with a few.
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “Word of Mouth Marketing” by Andy Sernovitz |
Worth a Read |
| I’ve posted separately about why we read, and review, so many books… |
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Perhaps more through good luck then good management, in our early days we put together the NEM-Watch product, which tends to be a product that “sells itself” – by generating a form of buzz.
Note that when I speak of buzz here, I do it within the framework of the industry in which we operate, which tends to have a staid image, as I discussed here. Certainly our successes are not going to make it to the “Top Viral 100” list, if there is such a beast.
As a company with a small team of staff and a large number of clients, and aspirations to grow our number of clients further over the next few years, I have a keen interest in understanding how we can use principles of buzz to assist us in building up the profile of all of our products.
Hence I found this book and excellent read.
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “The Anatomy of Buzz” by Emmanuel Rosen |
Thought-provoking |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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This is to follow Adam’s post on the Scott Ginsberg seminar, and specifically to follow Adam’s post with some more specific thoughts about what it means to us.
The post was initially made restricted, but I have now shifted some of the more confidential comments to a “part2” restricted post here….
(in the truest sense of the word) – as in, present yourself in such a way that other people want to talk about you.
One of Scott’s most telling points (and he had stolen this from others) is that:
1) If we talk about ourselves, the listener (naturally) assumes it is marketing, and is inclined to switch off.
2) However, if other people talk about us, then this provides our name/brand some instant credibility, in the listener’s mind. The extension of this is that the amount of credibility we gain is proportional to the listener’s view of the person talking about us. read more »
I just came back from a convention by the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) on “making a name for yourself.” The speaker was Scott Ginsberg, who has quite literally been wearing a nametag 24/7 for several years (he even has one tattooed on his chest). He was really quite interesting…
But forget all that. Because I won a prize. I got given all his books. Here’s me with his books with the greatest cheesy smile I could pull:
No, I’m not talking about corona discharge on HV AC power lines – I’m referring to the more esoteric notion of “Buzz Marketing”.
I asked the very same question, the first time I heard the term – a few years ago now.
The best definition I have come across is that it’s just like “Word of Mouth” Marketing/Advertising (i.e. people talking about you) – with the addition that you make a conscious, structured effort to get and sustain people talking about your product.
”Viral Marketing” is another coin termed for the same process .
Yeah right!
There are probably not many industries that could conjure up (and carry off with good effect) the marvellous advertisement revolving around the line:
“We’re excited by electricity, even if you’re not”
I did try to find some video-record of this advert, but was somewhat surprised to find that there was nothing recorded on YouTube or elsewhere (or at least none I could find).
Perhaps the advert itself is symbolic – TRUenergy gets all the industry insiders laughing at the joke, but Mr Joe Public – well, is sleeping on. Certainly it does seem that no one was sufficiently inspired to put a bootleg copy of the advert onto YouTube.
PS – did find this one, later, but it’s not exactly the one I was thinking of… (at 3,379 views currently, it does seem to have woken slumbering Joe Public – albeit very slightly)
My main point, here, is that there does not seem to be a lot of space in the energy market for a bit of buzz. Too geeky, too complicated, not sexy enough, or just damn boring?
Well, all’s not lost yet…
That’s a good question!
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