The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-Of-Mouth Marketing - Softcover

Rosen, Emanuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385496680 ISBN 13: 9780385496681

Publisher: Doubleday, 2002

Synopsis

The first guide to creating the word-of-mouth magic that breaks through the skepticism and information overload of today's consumers, and drive sales--and profits--to new heights.

As Newsweek recently proclaimed, "Buzz greases the great conveyor belt of culture and commerce, moving everything from movies to fashions of the body and mind faster and faster."

Now available in paperback, The Anatomy of Buzz, written by former marketing VP Emanuel Rosen, pinpoints the products and services that benefit the most from buzz and offers specific strategies for creating and sustaining effective word-of-mouth strategies. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 marketing executives who have successfully built buzz for major brands, Rosen describes the ins-and-outs of attracting the attention of influential first-users and "bigmouth" movers-and-shakers, and discusses proven techniques for stimulating customer-to-customer selling–including how companies can spread the word to new territories by taking advantage of customer hubs and networks on the Internet and elsewhere.

Recent surveys show that 74 percent of young people rely to some extent on others when selecting a car, that 56 percent of moviegoers follow the recommendations of friends, and that 65 percent of the people who bought a Palm Pilot were inspired by the enthusiasm of others. With The Anatomy of Buzz, business leaders have what they need to reignite excitement about an existing product or service or turbocharge the launch of a new product.

About this title

Review:

The Palm Pilot. The novel Cold Mountain. The iMac. Hotmail. FedEx. The movies The Blair Witch Project and There's Something About Mary. According to former marketing exec Emanuel Rosen, they all became successful not through traditional advertising or marketing routes, but through "buzz", that semi-tangible process through which information and commentary jump from one brain/mouth to another, and customer loyalty is built through the advice of friends, colleagues, or trusted "mega-hubs" of information. Rosen has spent the past few years studying the routes, nodes and clusters through which buzz passes and grows, and the result is this well-researched book. While it doesn't throw much new light on the mechanics of buzz, it is at least instructive and entertaining, offering mini-sagas of the successful buzz behind such marketing triumphs as the BMW Z3 roadster. Buzz-seekers be warned, however: with the exception of a short chapter at the end of the book called "Buzz Workshop", you won't find much of a blueprint for starting the gears of buzz for your product or service. What you do get is a trove of real-life stories that, if they don't inspire and guide you toward taking your first buzz-creating baby steps, probably mean you are the type of person who should stick with conventional advertising and PR. --Timothy Murphy

From the Back Cover:

Word-of-mouth marketing has long been recognised as a powerful selling tool. But just how does a company generate it?

How, for example, did the makers of Trivial Pursuit manage to create huge demand for their game, almost overnight? How did BMW use James Bond to double their orders for the Z3 Roadster? The ability, or inability, of companies to exploit word-of-mouth marketing can answer all of these questions.

The Anatomy of Buzz is the first book to show in a systematic way how these invisible networks work – and how you can benefit from them.

"The greatest advertising medium of them all is the human voice. Emanuel Rosen's book is an exceptionally useful guide to using this often-overlooked method of reaching customers and prospects."
'Al RIES, co-author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing'

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0385496680
• ISBN 13: 9780385496681
• Binding: Paperback