Accelerating Natural Contagion

Brandweek, Oct 30, 2000

Brandweek readers may be suffering lately from a case of buzz overload, given the amount of space we've devoted to marketing's word-of-mouth wonders: scooters, MP3, Harry Potter, et al. Yet much of the discussion surrounding buzz has taken place in hindsight, well after movies like The Blair Witch Project or products like Palm Pilot have gripped the culture, their phenomena begging explanation. Which raises the question: Can marketers anticipate--or better yet, influence--which products or services are most likely to benefit from buzz?

That is the subject of Emanuel Rosen's The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Currency/Doubleday). A former software marketing vp, Rosen draws on case studies in everything from computers to horror films to some of the insights contained in the business bestseller The Tipping Point, in order to build a logical analysis of buzz and how it works. "Marketing budgets are not the key to good buzz," the author writes. "[Buzz is] about what happens in the invisible networks, the interpersonal information networks that connect customers to each other."

The following excerpted chapter, "Accelerating Natural Contagion," identifies ways in which marketers can exploit those invisible networks in order to accelerate the word-of-mouth process. One technique is "leapfrogging": targeting clusters of people positioned to spread word quickly and to large numbers of other key people. That was a technique mastered by FedEx in its early days, Rosen argues, to quickly and convincingly establish its overnight delivery service. All it took was a handful of customers--senders, receivers--in distant U.S. cities to spread the word about FedEx, and suddenly the company "leapfrogged into new cities, new industries, new networks," writes Rosen.

Marketers can also work to create shortcuts within these networks, particularly on the Internet or other "dense areas." Invoking an image of a pr person working the room at a cocktail party, Rosen writes, "Shortcuts often happen by chance, and you increase the chances of these shortcuts happening to you by being out there, especially in the densest areas of the networks."

Rosen spent nine years as vp-marketing for Silicon Valley-based Niles Software, makers of EndNote, prior to writing this book. He lives in Menlo Park, Calif.

Trees have an interesting marketing problem. They need to spread their seeds widely to avoid competing with their own offspring for sun, water and food. But the problem is that they are rooted to one place. If you've ever been grounded for a week, you know the feeling.

So trees have had to develop other ways to help spread seeds. One of the techniques involves seduction and hitchhiking. The tree seeds start developing inside a green and not very attractive fruit, nut or cone; as the seeds mature, the fruit around them becomes ripe, making it more attractive, sweet, colorful and juicy That's when the seduction happens. Animals see the colorful fruit, taste it and take it with them to eat. In their travels they disperse the seeds, sometimes miles away from the source tree.

Nature has devised a clever strategy. But what works for trees doesn't work in business. There's an obvious reason: Companies operate in a more competitive environment, one where their survival often depends on their dominance. The strategy adopted by trees is too limited. Yet some companies adopt it by default. They develop beautiful "fruit" and wait for customers to come and find it and carry it around to wherever they happen to go. They believe that having a good product or providing a good service is all that's needed. These companies are not utilizing a significant advantage that we, as humans, have over trees. We can walk to the other end of the forest and plant the seed ourselves.

Two things are needed to create buzz successfully. The first is to have a contagious product. But having such a product alone is not enough. Companies that get good buzz also accelerate natural contagion.

The game Trivial Pursuit sold 20 million copies in 1984. Contagion played an important role in buzz about this product. People who played the game were compelled to demonstrate their knowledge of trivia to others at work, school or home. But word about the product didn't spread by contagion alone. Buzz was accelerated through many activities the company undertook. For example, the marketers of the game sent samples to celebrities who were mentioned in questions. This helped to start buzz (and trivia parties) in Hollywood. For months, more than a hundred radio stations broadcast trivia questions and gave away sample games to listeners. This helped to create buzz in numerous clusters all around the country, as winners of these games invited friends to play

I call this type of acceleration leapfrogging. Instead of relying on Customer A to tell B, who will tell C, who will tell D (you start to sense how slow word of mouth can be), smart marketers know that word of mouth almost always needs help. They do something to make word spread faster.