Buzz Marketing: Opportunity or Trap?

If you aren't entirely familiar with buzz marketing, the basic breakdown is that any company with a tangible product is now able to hire a buzz marketing firm to create artificial "buzz" about that product. For instance, if you're trying to do this with a book, the firm will probably give copies of that book to their agents. The agents will then read the book on buses and subway trains with the cover prominently displayed; they will recommend it to all their friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, write about it on their blog, etc., the purpose being to make it look like people are very excited about this book, the same way they would be if... you know, people actually were getting excited about it. Some may take more extreme measures, such as writing graffiti on public property of the product's name.

The topic was brought up in my publishing class a few weeks ago, and not everyone was entirely fond of it. The general consensus among people who weren't was that it would violate the trust we can place in anyone when they recommend something to us. As Teresa Nielsen Hayden, consulting editor at Tor Books, said at Boskone last weekend, the number 1 reason someone buys a book is because they read and enjoyed another book by the same author; the number 2 reason is because someone they trust (my emphasis) told them about it. Indeed, a world where anyone could be a buzz agent sounds more like a Phillip K. Dick novel than something I'd think could really happen. I know I'd be a little paranoid.

Mrs. Nielsen Hayden's comment, by the way, was from a panel called "Traps to Avoid: Scams and Other Issues that Can Affect New Writers," which also included Larua Anne Gilman (formerly of Roc Books) and literary agents Michael Kabongo and Eleanor Wood. When I asked the panel what their thoughts were about buzz marketing, reactions were uniformally negative.

Of course, the real confusing thing about buzz marketing, which is closely tied in with guerrilla marketing and viral marketing (the terms are, in fact, often used interchangeably) is that there have undeniably been very successful cases. And in a business where success and word of mouth are so inextricably linked (think Harry Potter on this one) it's very attractive to think that we can just do it all ourselves and create the kind of buzz that previously only came from marketing our stuff in the usual ways and hoping for the best. It's a notion that's especially popular among the growing pool of entertainment do-it-yourselfers; indie filmmakers, self-publishers, underground musicians, and so on.

Nevertheless, if you're thinking about trying to get yourself started through anything that could be called buzz, viral, or guerrilla marketing, I advise you to think twice (and not just because of that mooninite silliness). The most important thing to remember about those campaigns is that far more of them are ineffective than successful, and a great deal of them backfire--disproportionately, it seems to me, with products that are marketed along traditional routes. If you're paying attention, I'm sure someone, somewhere, has told you that these techniques are changing the face of entertainment. But as Teresa said, when you look closely at it, it's really nothing new, and certainly not a basket to put all your eggs in.