The first day of the AlwaysOn conference titled “Meet the Disruptors of Marketing, Advertising, Branding, and PR” ended with an interesting panel on the topic of whether brands should engage in buzz marketing. Ted Murphy, the CEO of PayPerPost, was in the audience, and his comments added some spice to the debate, which revolved around the familiar topics of transparency and trust.

In case you do not know PayPerPost, its business model is based on an automated system which puts advertisers in touch with bloggers who are willing to advocate on behalf of brands for a fee. Ted presented earlier in the day as one of the participants in a CEO Showcase on Consumer Generated Media. His presentation featured a case study on a PayPerPost campaign which had generated considerable buzz for a new HP camera. He showed one of the video posts which was created, in which a mom provides voiceover as her kids smash a camera with hammers because it was not HP.

During the panel, in defense of his approach, Ted explained that instead of paying a $100,000 to an ad agency to create one ad, the advertiser pays $10 to each blogger and gets 10,000 ads. What’s wrong with that, he asked, provided that there is full disclosure?

The answer from the panel seemed to range from “It’s bad because you are polluting the blogosphere” to “It’s OK provided there is full disclosure.” But the overall conclusion was that buzz is more a matter of luck than a dependable marketing strategy.

(From left: Jeff Jarvis, representative from Edelman, Gordon Gould, Barry Reicherter, David Weinberger) 

Most outspoken in his criticism of companies like PayPerPost was David Weinberger, co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” His strident comments reminded me of early Web users expressing their resentment of the first online ads. “Marketers,” he announced, “have been at war with their customers for 100 years,” and he saw PayPerPost’s activities as an extension of that assault into the social community of the blogosphere.

Blogger Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com was the panel moderator. (Read his account of the panel here.) While  he acknowledged that PayPerPost’s new policy of full disclosure made it more acceptable, he also seemed to be of the opinion that paying for posts was a dubious tactic. His use of the phrase “Mommy shill” when referring to the PayPerPost video made it pretty clear that he regarded the practice of paying for posts as bordering on the unethical.

(Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, was listed as a panel member but was unable to attend. Another representative of the company–whose name I did not catch—took his place. I noticed, and found it amusing, that he kept pretty quiet during the ethics discussion. No wonder, given the recent furor over the Walmart “flog.” I suspect he was very happy to avoid being dragged into a discussion about ethics and disclosure.)

My personal sympathies lie more with David and Jeff. Less because paid blogging sullies the medium, and more because I believe it is a very short-term sales tactic. Paying people to post will lead many people to tout brands they don’t use, or brands they’re not even familiar with. These posts may influence some people to buy a brand, but ultimately the product or service will be judged on its own merits. If it fails to live up to the blogger’s plaudits, the disappointed users will not buy it again, and may even badmouth the brand. The panel seemed to share this view. Paying people to praise your product is at best a weak way to build trust with consumers and at worst a means to undermine the credibility of both brand and blogger.

So if paying people to praise your product risks undermining consumer trust, what can marketers do to leverage the obvious power of word of mouth? The discussion confirmed the basics as follows:

1. If you have a great product or service then you are off to a good start. The challenge comes if your category does not happen to be one that people like to talk about.
2. In all cases the challenge is to be interesting, especially now, when, as David put it, “marketers have forgotten how to be interesting” and “the most interesting people in your company are your customers.”
3. Gordon Gould, CEO and Co-Founder of ThisNext, confirmed that trust is often based on shared lifestyles and interests. It is not just a matter of how many people recommend something; it matters who recommends it.

The most compelling part of the discussion led on from the panel’s agreement that there was no “soup to nuts” solution to measure the ROI of a conversation. David stated that “buzz marketing is all exceptions.” In other words, successful buzz is the result of individual acts of genius, not ones likely to be initiated by the brand’s communications agencies. The ensuing conversation confirmed the panel’s opinion that buzz is the outcome of hundreds of different customers “taking their shot” at creating something of interest about your brand. After discussing the fact that Diet Coke initially turned its back on the Mentos fountain phenomenon, it was agreed that the most critical challenge for marketers was to understand when they had “got lucky.” Buzz, it was agreed, was not a strategy, it was a wave that a brand had to catch at the right time to be successful.

So what should marketers do? First, be prepared to let go. If consumers are “off-message,” then maybe your message is wrong. Second, listen to what people are already saying about your brand. Third, be prepared to respond and ride the wave when it comes.

The overall consensus of the panel was that buzz is viral and therefore uncontrollable. What do you think? Can companies stimulate effective buzz without paying people to praise them?

 

Nigel Hollis Buzz payperpost

Tags: Buzz, Buzz marketing, Nigel Hollis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page