Creating buzz is similar in some ways to good storytelling. You build suspense by withholding information and releasing it gradually - from The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen. This seems to me to be the opposite of what we read last week on the Cluetrain Manifesto.

I think you have point here but I think Buzz is part of what Cluetrain was on about. Buzz only works if you withhold information and release it bit by bit which I think can pose a challenge in a 'connected' community where everything seems to be transparent. In the big picture, Buzz gets certain 'thing' to surface but I think other means must at one point come in to sustain the momentum.

How many buzz tragedies are there for every success story? WOM/viral marketing is hardly a new concept (flashback to the Breck commercial "she told two friends, and so on and so on"). Is WOM/buzz making a comeback due to the viral nature of the Web ... or are consumers, put off by endless product placement, flashy ad campaigns, etc, embracing more (supposedly) uncontrived marketing methods?

Tragedies, yep! I don’t think it is possible to measure the fizzing out of buzz as such and I don’t think it would be right to expect an x-product phenomenon to perpetually stay afloat, online or hopping from person to person in the community. Consumers are ruthless at consuming novelty and excitement and buzz tends to be short lived (depends on your time frame for measurement also I think) because we crave the follow-up excitement usually right after, right? And if it is not there, FLOP! In any case, as you say, I reckon there is high ratio of success-failure with buzz marketing initiative. Buzz has no middle ground, not like classical advertising because it’s a process quite literally in the mouth or keyboard of the ruthless consumer. So the nature of buzz marketing makes it much more transparent at one end verses classical advertising. Because the paying dollars for classical advertising give the impression that it was successful by buying ‘presence’, even through it may not have been, Buzz has no such safety nets. You either go it totally right or catastrophically wrong.

I wonder if buzz is making a comeback because marketers are writing books about it and marketers are creating buzz around buzz itself. It's been around forever - we used to call it word of mouth - but someone decided to start studying and trying to quantify it, and use the word 'buzz', so it's suddenly the big thing. I think all you can do is create a high quality product (or service), get it out to networks as much as possible, be enthusiastic (all that the book says), give good customer service, and hope. No matter how much studying is done, I don't think buzz can ever really be figured out - and the more big business figures it out, the more consumers will find new ways to spread word. Yeah, consumer!

Regarding creating buzz around a product that isn't new or of superior quality - if it's been on the market for a while and people know about it, I don't think it's possible to create buzz unless something happens to it - some improvement, some change, something controversial. Something has to happen that will start a conversation....

I think the more people go online and talk about their likes and dislikes, maybe as a part of buzz phenomenon or maybe just plain want-to-chat-kind-of-thing, the more marketers will be able to quantify this online interaction and make of the casual 'chatter' an active buzz participant. My point is that ,online or offline, we reveal valuable information which becomes the enabler of Buzz.

I think Diane has a point here. I believe we can start a conversation about the existing products by blogging, or as mentioned above, we give people direct experiences with the product. Consequently generating positive awareness or word of mouth.

I agree with Diane when she says that WOM has been around forever, it's even older than advertising, posters and all that... anyways in todays world when everyone is overwhelmed with advertising and practically overlook every atempt that companies are making... buzz is the new "it"... consumers outsmart the ads so they rely on what's going on "underground"...

Yes, I agree that Buzz is the new "it" but is it because so many companies have had major success from "Buzz" alone or that it's just trendy? Or are other companies trying to duplicate the success of buzz so there are so many attempts to spread buzz now? Obviously, major media advertising has gotten so expensive and the question remains as to whether consumers really "take in" these kinds of ads. Thanks to the web, Buzz can be sent through many more channels than before, which I believe has brought about the interest in duplicating this type of word or mouth. What is the best kind or most successful buzz - that which happens naturally or that which is fabricated by a company trying to spread the buzz themselves? I believe buzz that happens naturally can be most effective to a company since buzz comes and goes based on trends etc.....

I think companies have to be careful about staging WOM to spread buzz. Consumers are starting to see the puppet strings of marketing that rely on artificial buzz and they're getting pissed. The more marketers manipulate word-of-mouth, the less genuine it feels — and the more suspicious consumers become of any endorsement. Badads.org regularly alerts its newsletter subscribers to deals such as grocer ShopRite buying naming rights to an elementary school gym for $100,000, or Bulgari paying for product placement in a novel by Fay Weldon. So these kinds of scripted word-of-mouth efforts are ripe for expose. Freelance journalist Kate Kaye rails against “human media buys”: “Call me a drama queen, but I really believe that our society is shifting now that self is being co-opted by slogans and sales pitches. … As more and more marketing campaigns hinge upon our willing participation in product promotion, it's becoming easier and more advantageous for advertisers to rely upon us to do their dirty work for them.” Check out her rantings on www.LowbrowLowdown.com

Do you think people resent the growing trend of “experiential” campaigns which create word of mouth, track it, and have it in the strategy instead of letting it be a happy accident?

I do think people are starting to resent marketing and advertising being thrown at them - it's everywhere you turn. I know I'm totally turned off by it. (I mean, WHO is trying to project ads onto the sidewalks in the East Village?!!!) I think the reason WOM is so important to marketers now is that their tried and true methods aren't working as well because everything is oversaturated. And they're seeing that true WOM is the best form of promotion. I think a company needs to have a fantastic product that's high quality that they're passionate about (like the book mentions). The marketers can help get it out there - so I think honest, authentic promotion is viable - but forced over the top marketing is such a turn off. So I think there's an art to learning how to put a product out and let the buzz start "on its own" (though it's not really on its own because the market would be seeded). But I think it has to be done ethically and really with the consumers best interest at heart. I think that type of marketing will be successful with today's oversaturated, suspicious consumers.

Discussion points:
1. I agree with Diane; any products/services or ideas can benefit from buzz only if something interesting has been created about it. It can be an event, having some experts experiencing and talink about the product etc. The important thing is making it natural, otherwise, as mentioned by Heather above, the consumers won't "buy it".

2. It is a risk big companies take when the brand becomes too attached to the CEO. If something bad happens to the CEO, information runs faster with the WOM and buzz tools on the virtual space and that is impossible to control.

I believe buzz is making a come back because through the internet and the extended reach of people it becomes so much more powerful. As a marketer you cannot neglect negative buzz about your product. However I do believe that buzz is only relevant for new, hip, superior products - main stream products still need to look for other means of advertisment.

Buzz is word of mouth and marketers just found a new word to make it sound sexier. Internet has the power to amplify buzz. I agree with Ricarda about negative buzz since people spread negative impressions more easily. I disagree on using buzz only for new products though. Anyway, I just think that it is too hard to quantify/control buzz (almost impossible).

I somehow don't think that Buzz was ever NOT present. Haven't we all been contributing to it over dinner, with friend and family-discussing the issue, whatever it may be, plastering for example! We give these plasters a human dimension through merely talking about it. Granted the more controversial it is and the more chances the ‘topic’ will make it to the dinner table. Like Diane says, and I agree, people are fed up with 'plastering' and want more respect from companies but in a way I don’t think these companies care nor do they have grounds to care because whether controversial or not, we discuss it. In the Static sense, I think ‘plastering’ it in our face does not cut it anymore, not the way it used to at least. We need discussion and I think the animosity that is the internet is allowing for genuine discussions to take place. I guess my point is the ‘plastering’ won’t stop but what will change is what we think of that ‘plastering’.

Hi Everybody, if you have a minute check out this very funny video on youtube with Roseanne Barr on Graham Norton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hGtvNoOR4Y
Would you consider this to be good or bad buzz?

The video is definitely funny. It is hard to say if it is good or bad buzz. We should see if people really start going to that village. I just think it is a super fast way to put a place on the map! Borat did something similar with Kazakhstan. They wanted to sue him at the beginning, but they realized that nobody talked about Kazakhstan before.

the hard thing about buzz is that you don't actually know for sure if it's going directly where you want it to go... I mean, yes your product/service will be talked about but how can you control the direction it's taking? How can you make a "bad" buzz turn "good"?, and how can you make your product from being talked about to being consumed?

I think you almost have to look at buzz like PR: there's no such thing as bad buzz. In today's environment, marketers have to accept that we can no longer control the message, we can only influence it at best.