No, it has nothing to do with bees. When we talk about buzz marketing (buzz is buzzing in English) we are talking about a technique that, although it wants to be presented as new, is one of the oldest in marketing in general. come on when Luis Bassat he was wearing shorts: word of mouth.
Basically, buzz marketing is a type of , although with nuances. In other words, what we want is that whoever is exposed to a message from a campaign of this type tells others about it and that people talk about it. The main objective of buzz marketing is to generate conversation about a brand or a specific product.
You may have also heard of buzz marketing as ‘word-of-mouth’. As they say in my town, this is older than the chorricos in the park. For those who are not from Elche, I attach a photo of the aforementioned chorricos.
And to illustrate the old age of the concept, one of the most famous (and successful) buzz marketing campaigns that have been carried out in Spain: The pre-launch of the new ONCE coupon (the ‘couponazo’) back in 1987, the year in which half of you and you you weren’t born, buds (I don’t put it in feminine because it sounds terrible):
This campaign was very simple: For two weeks or so, several commercials like this were inserted on television, without saying anything else. At the end of that time the entire country was seething with impatience (there was no Internet, nobody could find out easily) to know what the hell those ads were that were going to bring so many queues.
And at the end, on the appointed day, they show us the end of the queue: an ONCE vendor selling the new coupon. Just great. And its effect was brutal. ONCE owes much of what it is today to this campaign.
The four principles of buzz marketing 2.0
The arrival of the and of Youtube has made launching a buzz marketing campaign easier…and harder at the same time. Easier because anyone can do it, and harder because so many people do it and it’s hard to be original.
Today there is no buzz marketing without social networks, the word-of-mouth channel par excellence. The intention is that the message about the brand, which may or may not be explicit, reaches a user from another user and not from the brand itself. Why?. Because that way we will pay more attention. It is not the same for a brand to tell us “look at this how cool” (we will automatically get defensive) as if the person telling us is a friend or acquaintance, in which case commercial intention is not presupposed.
Buzz marketing is based on four basic principles:
- 1. Curiosity. We are curious beings, and any “mystery” intrigues us and we want to know the end.
- 2. Confidence. We trust a message more if it comes from someone we know.
- 3. The content: The message that is transmitted contains something that we believe is worth sharing, either because it is or because of its usefulness.
- 4. Virality: The message must be transmitted by itself, without the company or brand that creates it actively intervening in its propagation.
there is certain terminological confusion, since there are those who define buzz marketing as that which is carried out in traditional media, while that which is carried out on the Internet can be viral or word-of-mouth marketing. Let’s call everything variants of buzz marketing.
There is a variant that is less “viral” but also generates conversation: that of the In this case, almost always leading bloggers in sectors such as fashion or technology, whose recommendations on products and brands are followed by many people.
Internet buzz marketing has an undisputed king: Apple. the apple brand has been using it for years, taking advantage of the insatiable curiosity that each new product launch arouses to filter information with droppers that are amplified to infinity. From the casual and very convenient “forgetting” of test prototypes by the engineers to their policy of neither confirming nor denying anything until the big event arrives: the keynote.
By the time this occurs, millions of people are waiting to see it in streamingSince being invited to an Apple keynote is more or less the equivalent of being called in for tea by the Queen of England. Everything is measured and choreographed to the millimeter, as Apple is well aware of one fundamental factor: buzz marketing saves you hundreds of millions a year on advertising.
In fact, a new concept of digital media has emerged, that is not based on the news, but in everything that can create buzz, that which has the potential to be viral; from kitten videos to the 10 rules to know if your boyfriend is gay (the greatest exponent of this style has been BuzzFeed) to scientific or technical news (Xataka, Genbeta…) or directly nonsense content (Strambotic).
All this to create new advertising media in which brands that do not want or cannot (or do not know how) to invest in buzz marketing can “hang” on content that has been designed to be viral. As Salvador Dali said: “The important thing is that they talk about me, even if it’s good”
How to create a buzz marketing campaign
Let’s focus now on something practical: the design of a specific buzz marketing campaign. It is clear that, like all marketing, it can be based on campaigns or it can be a continuous action, in fact the ideal is both. But now let’s talk about a specific campaign.
A typical buzz marketing campaign has three fundamental phases:
1.teaser
In the style of movie trailers (the good ones, not those that tell you the entire movie in the trailer). Here we usually don’t even reveal the brand, or it’s done very tangentially. The mission of the message transmitted in this phase is generate curiosity, ‘snag’ the target audience and at the same time transmit values or characteristics that we want them to associate with the product or brand.
two. Revelation
We discovered the cake and who is behind the teaser, with a second video or statement, and we immediately move on to phase 3.
3. Burst
Now we have to make the revelation reach the whole world. The message is “Hey, it was us”. All available means of communication are used here. If the teaser has been good and has worked well, the media will publish the reveal for free. And social networks will boil.
The problem with this traditional scheme: It’s been used ad nauseam, and most of the time it doesn’t work anymore. Only when the teaser is really good (which is extremely complicated) can it work. Which brings us to plan B: Condense all this in a single videolike the famous video of Volkswagen and the boy Darth Vader, or this Exorcist-style vacuum cleaner ad that I think is just great (a viral phenomenon that exceeds 40 million views, not bad for a little-known brand):
More and more brands are joining the premiere of their videos on YouTube, which frees them from the corset of 20 seconds of television and allows them to have much greater control over how far virality reaches. And the trend is clear: humor rules. Therefore, designing the message and the format to spread it (video is king), adding intrigue and humor and launching it on the networks is the formula that is most used for a specific campaign.
Beware: Not everything works. The ingredients have to be very well combined. for the cocktail to be really effective. As we have said on other occasions, nobody has the secret of virality.
Last but not least, a great advantage of digital buzz marketing: everything is measurable. There are numerous tools, including specialized companies, that provide us with very precise information on who we have reached, in what geographical areas, where and when, which, when used well, serves to refine the shot more and more. Now it’s your turn to encourage you to try your own campaign. Do you dare?
Image: Depositphotos
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