We recently interviewed many of the nation’s thought leaders on the subject of viral marketing in connection with our Igniting Buzz Conference which will be held on February 27-28, 2006 in San Francisco. The following are among the insights that are interviewees imparted:
According to Alex Macris of The Themis Group:
There is this story that when Vespa was marketing itself, they would just park them outside a really cool club in Los Angeles. Without actually getting any celebrities to drive them, they gave the impression that really cool people in LA drove Vespas. So people who went to these clubs saw these Vespas and it sort of set off a buzz that this was hip.
According to George Silverman of Market Navigation:
If 25 people tell 25 people six times, that’s everybody in the entire world; seven times is everybody who has ever lived in the entire history of the human race.
According to Douglas Atkin of Merkley + Partners:
In order to create buzz, companies must have genuinely great products. Another crucial component to the DNA of companies that are successful in generating buzz is that the employees must be cohesive and generate a lot of camaraderie. Employees must believe in their company. Employees that have a cult-like belief in their company and its products are most likely to be able to demonstrate their convictions to the community of potential customers.
According to Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz:
I view audiovisual means of communications as the most potentially powerful trend in igniting buzz marketing. Reading text is still something that many people find difficult and time consuming. I see much more audio and video reporting from consumers. It’s not only that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also that taking a picture or viewing it is so much easier than writing a thousand words...I view blogs as just the first wave of something much bigger that will involve audio and video.
According to Rob Key of Converseon:
If we look at rumors and negative information, the genesis is often first within the blogosphere which is becoming increasingly influential. Just as a quick example, we recently did a study of the top search engine listings for the BusinessWeek 100. 39% of those top listings are derived from consumer-generated media, and that’s going to proliferate as blogs continue to grow.
According to Kraig Baker of David Wright Tremaine:
As viral marketing gets more creative, there are going to be a lot more laws that people are going to run across that they didn’t really think about. For instance, if your have a Bluetooth phone and you walk by a certain kind of billboard, they may send an ad to your phone. Probably few people recognize that not only do we have privacy issues associated with that interaction, but there are also going to be FCC issues associated with the fact that you’re dealing with a telecommunications provider with a wireless provider. So people are going to be moving into these new areas without thinking that they may be running across new bodies of law.
The above excerpts derived from interviews that will be included in our conference book which will be made available to conference attendees free of charge. These interviews can be purchased by requesting them from naomi@twst.com.
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