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Have you blogged
yet? If the answer is yes, then you're either a hip Connector
who is always first to be in the know, or an information-hungry
Maven who wants to know everything there is to know about
blogs, the latest Internet trend. Connectors and Mavens are
two of the essential enablers critical to that social and
marketing phenomenon known as word- of-mouth, the glue that
holds together the alternative media universe.
In his best-selling book The Tipping Point, author Malcolm
Gladwell asserts that trends, in everything from fashion to
crime to media, develop and spread like viruses thanks to
Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. "Mavens are data banks.
They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they
spread it. But there is also a select group of people—Salesmen—with
the skills to persuade us."
An Array of Alternatives
Alternative media, by any other name, including word-of-mouth,
is a confusing collection of attempts to reach the consumer
while bypassing traditional advertising vehicles. Some refer
to it as buzz marketing. Others prefer street marketing, guerrilla
marketing, renegade marketing, virtual marketing, ambush marketing,
vanguard marketing, ambient marketing, covert marketing, under-the-radar
marketing, below-the-line marketing, diffusion marketing or
viral marketing.
Regardless of the moniker, alternative media rely on the influence
of Connectors, that special category of people who have mastered
what sociologists call the weak tie or social acquaintance.
The larger their network of social acquaintances, the more
power Connectors wield in society, and the better positioned
they are to trigger trends. Marketers also know them as influentials,
carriers, trendsetters and evangelists.
Similarly, Mavens stand at the ready, sharing the detailed
knowledge they have gleaned from reams of research, product
comparisons and personal testing. As Gladwell sees it, Mavens
"are the folks who willingly read the instruction manuals,
test drive cars and Beta test software. They are the early
adopters, the few who thrive on complexity and simply don't
shut down. Their behavior is distinctive."
The Freebie Factor
Tapping into this kind of people power works. Just ask Ford
Motor Company about the success of its product seeding campaign
for the Ford Focus. The company gave advance models to employees
of celebrities like Madonna and Adam Sandler. Why? So the
cars would become de facto commercials parked in front of
the hippest clubs, restaurants and parties in town. From a
base of a mere 120 influential Gen Y hipsters in five key
markets, Ford moved a fleet-worthy 286,166 units in its first
year.
This "appe-teaser" strategy also paid off big for
Hotmail when launching its free e-mail service. Each subscriber
e-mail went out with a recruitment message to the recipient
and the implied endorsement of the sender. The net result
was what some view as the fastest new product adoption rate
in history—from zero to 12 million members in just 18
months.
Tag Team Teasers
If a beautiful woman approaches you in a bar, slips a note
in your pocket and whispers "Save me" in your ear,
there's nothing salacious about it. Call the number to find
out her fate, and instead, you'll ring through to a pitch
for Majestic, a suspense/thriller game from Electronic Arts.
In case you're curious, chivalry still reigns, and about 60
percent of solicited men called the number.
Vespa hired a posse of great-looking posers and dispatched
them to hang out on scooters near Los Angeles hot spots like
Sunset Plaza, Melrose and the Third Street Promenade. A query
about the motorbikes earned the inside scoop that trendsetters
like Sandra Bullock and rapper Sisqo are Vespa owners, as
well as the address and phone number of the nearest Vespa
boutique.
Score one for the new generation of buzz marketers. While
those schooled in so-called "classical" guerrilla
marketing techniques may hold that viral marketing drives
consumers to the product, many new age practitioners like
Big Fat, a Manhattan-based viral marketing agency, are going
a step further. They recruit street marketers to take the
product to the people for clients like Nestlé, Nintendo
and Pepsi.
Other tag teams earning notice for their ambush marketing
tactics include:
- Lucky Strike Force crews—armed with iced coffee
and beach chairs in summer, hot coffee and cell phones in
winter—attempted to make exiled smokers more comfortable
outside office buildings.
- Hebrew National "mom squads" hit the road in
SUVs, firing up the barbecue grill for impromptu backyard
parties replete with product samples and coupons.
- Sony Ericsson couples equipped with the new T68i cell
phone/video camera wandered the streets of New York and
Los Angeles pretending to be tourists. Passers-by kind enough
to agree to take their picture got an unsolicited product
pitch in return.
What's
the Buzz About?
In a 44-page study of word-of-mouth based on Internet chat
room participation, Professors David Godes (Harvard Business
School) and Dina Mayzlin (Yale School of Management) define
buzz as the transfer of information from someone who is in
the know to one who isn't.
The study compared chat room buzz about new television shows
with Nielsen ratings to determine if a statistical correlation
existed. It did. Other learnings included the fact that for
buzz to have some bite, chat must reach across multiple communities
or newsgroups with differing demographics. Buzz, like so many
other phenomena, is relatively short-lived, at least in the
case of television shows. By week six, buzz had faded into
background noise.
Everybody's Doing It
Word-of-mouth now influences two-thirds of all consumer product
sales, according to a May 2001 report by the venerable McKinsey
& Co. Once the exclusive province of renegade boutique
agencies bringing counterculture products to market, viral
marketing has literally spread like a cold.
One driver behind this shift in ownership is the emergence
of ad-blasting technologies like TiVo. Personal video recorders
(PVRs) enable consumers to block out the commercials that
were once the bedrock of consumer product advertising. PVR
users willingly opt out of commercials some 72.3 percent of
the time, a rate ringing alarm bells among advertisers.
Another factor is economics. With the cost of a 30-second
television spot pushing $450,000 for a single airing, manufacturers
are game to try an alternative that boasts a price tag just
a fraction of that amount. No expensive media buys, pricey
location shoots or costly creative sessions. Just experiential
delivery straight to the consumer.
Then there's the powerful punch of a viral message delivered
in a seemingly personalized, one-to-one manner. These surprise,
spontaneous encounters prove particularly appealing to the
media savvy cohort born between 1979 and 1994. It's no accident
that "word," as deployed by rappers everywhere,
is synonymous with truth. So too is the perception of word-of-mouth.
Why Word-of-Mouth Works
Complexity gives rise to confusion, confusion to isolation,
and isolation to immunity. Gladwell believes that word-of-mouth
works because, in the face of complexity, "people embrace
more primitive social bonds and turn to the very personal
networks run by Mavens and Connectors."
The initial response to complexity is confusion. As people
seek more information for clarity, it merely adds to the data
overload. A second response to complexity is isolation—the
need to limit social connections and media options to the
trusted few. Eventually, people become immune to media influence,
responsive only to known influentials.
According to Gladwell, "A great example of media immunity
is the telephone. In the beginning, when the phone rang, it
was a friend calling. Now we need caller ID to filter out
the telemarketers. When e-mail first arrived, we'd rush home
to open all four or five of them. Today we cringe at the thought
of wading through hundreds of e-mails, many unsolicited."
One way to circumvent built-up media immunity: reduce market
complexity by simplifying the product offering, from fewer
SKUs to more versatile products. Combining conditioner with
shampoo in a single product was liquid genius. So too was
the convenience insight that converted the cap on a bottle
of laundry detergent into a measuring cup for the product.
Co-Opting a Medium
Much like products, it appears that media may have life cycles
as well, ones that read like a modern day allegorical tale.
In the beginning there was a medium. And it was pure. And
the marketer took it and shaped it to his own purpose. Television
begat the infomercial. Telephones begat the telemarketer.
The World Wide Web begat the spammer. Advertising has so saturated
the media that by some estimates, the average North American
encounters some 3,000 ads each day.
Gladwell cites the Blair Witch Project marketing campaign
as a seminal example of the co-opting of electronic media.
The first time out, film promoters took advantage of the naiveté
of web surfers who accepted postings as honest and cool. The
second time around, the sequel and the web campaign both bombed.
The medium and the consumer had both matured.
Back to Blogs
The search for new, more believable electronic vehicles brings
us back to blogs, short for web logs. According to NetLingo,
the Internet dictionary, blogs are a frequent, chronological
publication of personal thoughts and web links. When compared
with the slick production values of corporate web sites, blogs
have the same homespun appeal as flyers stapled to telephone
poles: crude but credible.
Initially functioning as online diaries of a sort, many mutated
in the post-September 11 world into virtual political platforms.
Catherine Seipp, a contributor to the American Journalism
Review, writes "Blog now refers to a web journal that
comments on the news—often by criticizing the media
and usually in rudely clever tones—with links to stories
that back up the commentary with evidence."
Just ask Trent Lott. Blogs blotted him off the political landscape,
courtesy of Internet opinion pages including Instapundit and
Talking Points Memo. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
credits these two blogs with keeping the spotlight focused
on Lott's controversial remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th
birthday party until conventional media were forced to act.
Blogging for Business
Given the natural progression of any media, blogs too are
being commercialized. Still in their infancy as a business
tool, commercial blogging pioneer Macromedia offers pointers
to interested marketers on "keeping it real":
- Appoint company evangelists to author blogs.
- Establish guidelines for postings.
- Accept that blogs are the voice of passionate individuals,
not the company.
- Embrace an unwavering commitment to honesty.
However, one must
tread carefully when tampering with emerging media. One marketer
recently experienced a stampede of negative publicity among
the blogging community when it recruited some well-known bloggers
to add links to a web site for a flavored milk drink.
Captive Marketing
Feel like Big Brother is watching? Can't escape the electronic
eye? Then expect that sense of paranoia to increase as captive
marketing catches fire. Small video screens bearing a mix
of news, infotainment and commercials have migrated from airplanes
to taxi cabs, elevators, stores, rest rooms and even the golf
course.
Try these stats on for size:
- Captivate Network has installed 4,200 flat video screens
in 400 North American office buildings to take full advantage
of the six minutes per day office workers spend in elevators.
- Comedy Central promoted a new show by placing ads in 500
bar bathrooms in four cities.
- Seven companies are road testing their interactive video
technology in 400 New York City taxis.
- If captive advertising tees you off, avoid the 21,960
golf carts fitted out with mounted screens.
A
Cautionary Tale
In a recent Time magazine article, the Center for Digital
Democracy, (an organization committed to the development and
encouragement of noncommercial, public interest programming),
likened guerrilla marketing to the "brand washing of
America," a not-so-subtle reference to brainwashing techniques.
Adbusters bemoans what it terms "cultural corruption,"
an unavoidable offshoot of alternative media activities.
The question for new media is simple: When do you cross the
line between subtlety and subterfuge? Author Fay Weldon lost
credibility when it was discovered she had been paid by Bulgari
to feature the brand in her latest tome, titled The Bulgari
Connection. Sony Pictures Entertainment took it on the chin
when favorable critic quotes in movie ads proved to be works
of fiction.
Lauren Bacall's blatant flacking for Visudyne, a macular degeneration
treatment, on NBC's Today Show, prompted the competing CNN
network to revise its disclosure policies. Even starchy IBM
proved vulnerable to the unexpected pitfalls of under-the-radar
marketing techniques. Street teams stenciling sidewalks as
part of the "Peace, Love, Linux" campaign garnered
tons of press... and a $100,000 fine for defacing San Francisco
sidewalks.
Perhaps the most egregious example of a good thing gone bad
is the New York couple, Jason Black and Frances Schroeder,
who attempted to auction off naming rights to their son for
$500,000. There were no takers.
The Inside Scoop
Gladwell offers the following advice to consumer packaged
goods marketers who may be adding alternative media to the
mix:
1. Be honest. The bromide "honesty is
the best policy" transfers to the new media environment.
Companies that lurk in chat rooms or hire bloggers to tout
their wares can expect huge customer blowback. Brand equity
in the new media world, like the old, relies on product and
promotional integrity.
2. Be quick. Alternative media is all about
speed. The useful life cycle of a message is much shorter
than with conventional media. The biggest crime in the new
media environment is being boring.
3. Be first. If you want to play the cool
game with products and messaging, then you had better be in
the vanguard. The next cool thing is only cool until the masses
embrace it.
4. Be young. Match the medium and message
to the market. Alternative media won't reach or resonate with
older consumers. In fact, it may trivialize a brand in their
eyes. New media keeps attracting a new fan base, one growing
younger every day.
One thing is certain. Alternative media is here to stay, a
permanent part of the media landscape, mutating in response
to cultural changes and grassroots opportunities. As it proliferates,
alternative media becomes more profuse and diffused, suggesting
another name to add to the list: ubiquitous media.
Malcolm Gladwell contributed to this article. He is a former
business and science writer at The Washington Post. He is
currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. The Tipping Point,
his first book, has become an international bestseller, with
foreign rights sold in eleven countries. It can be obtained
at most major bookstores or through his web site, http://www.gladwell.com.
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