Buzz Builder

Rory Sutherland's Brilliant TED Speech Illustrating the Triumph of Perception over Actual Change

In this entertaining TED presentation, ad guru Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy shares some hilarious examples that illustrate how it is often much easier to improve the success of a product or service with the creative use of language than trying to implement expensive changes. Sutherland reinforces my longstanding belief that more companies fail not because they're selling the wrong things but they're telling stories that fail to engage customers.

Suffering Haitians Need Your Financial and Blogging Support in this Dire Time

The immense tragedy of the recent earthquake in Haiti generated hours of sad footage like the below coverage on the CBS Evening News. It was heartening to see the initial outpouring and sympathy from people around the world. However, since the media has an increasingly short attention span, it's likely that the story of Haiti's difficulties in providing sustained assistance to its suffering populace will receive very little mainstream media attention. If just one percent of the 135,000,000+ bloggers in the world, wrote a post encouraging people to donate to organizations supporting Haitians as they try to rebuild their lives, that would be 1,350,000 million influential voices of support.

I've chosen to give money to Mercy Corps, a secular non-profit international aid organization, because they have a proven track record for minimizing administrative costs while maximizing direct assistance to the needy in times of emergency. Doctors Without Borders, another well-run non-profit organization and Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1999), has teams on the grounds in Haiti that desperately need assistance to provide the long-term medical care that Haitians will require as they recover from the worst natural disaster to ever strike them.

Please do what you can to spread the buzz about donating money or blogging on behalf of the Haitians.

"Marketing Without Advertising": Video Excerpts from a Presentation at the Executive Officers Club (EOC)

I gave a keynote presentation on "Marketing Without Advertising" at the Executive Officers Club (EOC)  in Portland, OR on May 21, 2009. Below are are excerpts from that presentation. If you know an association or corporation interested in learning about word of mouth marketing, please refer them to this video or my speaking web page.

Wineries Turn to Social Media Contests and Announcements to Generate Buzz

A couple of months ago, Murphy-Goode Winery in California generated tons of buzz when it announced that it was looking for a social media guru to "demystify wine" using Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. The six-month dream job included a $10,000/month salary and free lodging.

The marketing folks at Murphy-Goode were inspired to create the position when it saw how Tourism Queensland in Australia generated a lot of online and mainstream media attention when it sponsored the "Best Job in the World Contest" that paid its winner $150,000 Australian dollars to live on a Great Barrier Reef island for six months. Interestingly, Ben Southall, the winner of the Australian contest, is now being criticized in the blogoshpere for an online diary that followers say sheds little light on what a normal tourist would experience.

Approximately 2,000 people applied for the Murphy-Goode position and 900 videos were posted on the company's website, a key part of the application process. However, when the winery announced the 10 finalists, controversy erupted when some of the top vote-getters weren't selected. Seemingly, the PR snafu was smoothed over when Murphy-Goode Winery selected Hardy Wallace, a noted wine blogger from Atlanta as its social media guru.

Murphy-Goode is not the only winery trying to leverage the buzz surrounding social media. Today, the front page of the business section of The Oregonian highlights how Willamette Valley wineries are successfully using Twitter and Facebook to boost sales - particularly with younger consumers. It was particularly cool to read how this year's Indie Wine Festival was able to to sell a lot of unsold tickets simply by getting the word out to its Twitter followers.

Greenpeace's Publicity Stunt on Mt. Rushmore Achieved Its Objectives

On 7/8/09, three Greenpeace activities climbed on Mt. Rushmore and unfurled a giant banner with President Obama's profile and message saying “America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming.” Immediately, news of this action spread around the world. The stunt was particularly effective at garnering media attention for three reasons:

1. It took place on one of America's most iconic memorials.
2. It's bold size and juxtaposition of President Obama vs. great past presidents created a powerful image.
3. It provided a strong visual image to illustrate the passion of environmentalists regarding the talks about global warming at the G8 meeting in Italy.

A journalist for the Rapid City Journal (SD), who had found my post in this blog about publicity stunts, called me to ask about the efficacy of the publicity stunt and ran my comments in a story about the Greenpeace effort. The article observed:

“I’m guessing activist groups around the world are going to be looking at this saying, ‘hmm, this might be a case study for us,’” said Patrick Galvin of Galvin  Communications in Portland, Ore. Galvin specializes in helping businesses build buzz without expensive advertising.

Greenpeace snapped a photo of the banner with an aerial camera, and a video camera operator near Highway 244 at the memorial broadcast live footage of the incident online.

Greenpeace released a well-timed statement about the demonstration and placed it prominently on its Web site, which included live updates posted on Twitter, an online microblogging site. 

Media organizations throughout the country quickly picked up the video and still images supplied by Greenpeace. The video, images and Twitter messages fleshed out news articles which initially took much of their information from a Greenpeace statement issued moments before the climbers unrolled the banner.

Galvin said he also was impressed by the activists’ adept use of Twitter. Before the event, friends and supporters of the organization and the climbers on Mount Rushmore eagerly spoke of the event on the online site Twitter in the hours and minutes leading up the banner drop.

Several of the climbers broadcast their location to the world via Twitter as they rappelled onto Abraham Lincoln’s stone face.

“Twitter has become this platform that, more than anything else, people are attracted to it for its immediacy,” Galvin said. “Having one of the rappellers tweeting about it was brilliant.”

In a subsequent interview that I provided the same day to The Christian Science Monitor, which appeared on 7/8/09, I observed that the Greenpeace effort might not be a total success:

Galvin said in terms of communicating a message effectively, he’d give it a “nine out of ten.” But the jury is still out he says on whether the overall strategy will work. That’s because Greenpeace broke the law and if any damage to Mt. Rushmore was done, it could be a big negative for the organization.

“If there was any defacement, if that banner whipped a piece of Abraham Lincoln’s nose, then the message will get diluted very quickly,” he said. “I’d give it a qualified thumbs-up.”

Since those articles appeared, it appears as if the Greenpeace publicity stunt served its purpose. Traffic to the Greenpeace website spiked as the story was reported around the world in thousands of blog and media outlets. The global warming debate seemed to garner a surge of discussion. The apparent lack of damage to Mt. Rushmore and quick release of the Greenpeace activists who carried out the stunt did not engender any long term negative consequences for the organization.

Super Bowl Ads Can Build Buzz

Today my wife and I joined 90 million other Americans in watching the Super Bowl on television. I was most interested in seeing the game but my wife, who never watches football, always makes a point of catching the Super Bowl to see the ads. It's the only time a year we actually use TiVo to rewind our favorite commercials.

Fox charged almost $3 million for some 30-second spots although most advertisers paid far less than that depending on when they bought the time, how much they bought and at what point in the game it's placed.

For such a princely sum of money, it's easy to be skeptical that a Super Bowl ad is a good marketing investment. While I'm usually very suspicious of the claim that television advertising is a good way to create buzz, the Super Bowl is an exception.

In an interesting Dow Jones article a couple of days ago, there are some interesting cases of companies that generated tremendous buzz from Super Bowl ads.

For instance, Nationwide Financial Services had one of last year's biggest buzz building commercials with a spot  featuring Kevin Federline, best-known as the estranged husband of Britney Spears, fantasizing about doing a music video while cooking up fries at a fast-food restaurant. That ad has passed into Super Bowl legend, largely because of the enormous publicity it generated, with free media exposure estimated at $23 million in value.

In addition, the company said the ad generated more than 600,000 visits to nationwide.com featured advertising page, with over 500,000 new visitors, and was viewed 832,579 times on its Website alone.

One of the few commercials from this year's Super Bowl which seems to be generating buzz in the blogosphere is the racy Danica Patrick ad for Go Daddy, an website registration company. The company has long been known for pushing the envelope when it comes to good taste. In fact, that seems to be strategy. This year, GoDaddy generated free media attention for having 10 spots rejected by Fox before the network finally accepted one to air. In fact, the company even created a website that features some of the rejected commercials.

Although the Go Daddy ads aren't very creative, I salute them for creating a web page that leverages their Super Bowl buzz. It's amazing that many other companies spent millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads and didn't attempt to drive consumers to their websites to watch the ad again or learn more about the company.

 

If Al Gore Wants Maximum Buzz, He Should Launch His Presidential Candidacy at the Academy Awards on February 25

If former Vice President Al Gore wants to enter the 2008 presidential election with a splash, he has an incredible opportunity on February 25.  That's when An Inconvenient Truth is up for two Academy Awards (best documentary feature and best original song). If the movie wins an Oscar for best documentary, he should announce his presidential candidacy as part of his acceptance speech. If he doesn't win, he should leverage the spotlight on the Academy Awards and call a press conference announcing his candidacy immediately after the final Oscar is given.

Why make this announcement during or after the Academy Awards? There is no better way to grab the attention of the American public. In 2006, the Academy Awards attracted 38.59 million viewers with 26.57 million households watching. Only the Super Bowl attracts a larger television audience than the Academy Awards in the U.S. Gore can use the buzz surrounding his movie to draw attention to his efforts to sensitize people to the dangers of global warming and how to avert it. His work on this issue sets Gore apart the other candidates in th most crowded presidential field since 1928. That degree of difference would build buzz around Gore's candidacy which would quickly propel him into becoming the Democratic front runner.

Of course, there is another award ceremony that Gore might want to leverage. It was recently announced that he has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

The Nobel Prize winner is traditionally announced in mid-October, with the prize always presented on the December 10 anniversary of the death of its creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

In 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, which Brende said shows the award committee's focus on ecological problems as a source of conflict.

"I think climate change is the biggest challenge we face in this century," Brende said.

To see more buzz about the possibility of Gore entering the presidential contest , check out Draft Gore.

An Inconvenient Truth trailer:

Espresso Arts Catering: Demonstrating Passion & Quality through Coffee Tastings

For food and drink manufacturers and retailers, tastings are excellent way to create buzz for new products. From Costco  to my local neighborhood grocery stores, I've noticed that samples are being offered with greater frequency. However, rarely have I seen somebody providing knowledgeable insight into what makes a product new and different.  What a wasted opportunity!

Last week, at Connect (an outstanding networking group in Portland, Oregon to which I belong), Christine Herman made a presentation that demonstrated the passion for her business and the quality of her products. She spoke for 20 minutes about the evolution of coffee in the United States. The first wave of coffee was Folger's, Maxwell House, and Nescafe which utilized robusta coffee beans, the cheapest to bring to market. The second wave, which Starbucks  dominates, brought better quality coffee to Americans made from Arabica coffee beans. The third wave of coffee has only taken off in a few markets. In Portland, Oregon, which has the highest per capita coffee consumption of any city in the United States, discriminating coffee drinkers are driving the growth of artisanal coffee producers like Stumptown Coffee and Ristretto Roasters  which roast a wide variety of coffee beans that are ground just before they are made into delicious drinks.

Following her informative presentation, Christine led us through a tasting of five different coffees from Stumptown Coffee which is her exlusive coffee provider. As we sampled each one, she did a marvelous job explaining the flavor profiles using interesting comparisons to a wide range of food and beverages. Her passion and expertise were so clear and her coffee so good that I would certainly hire her company, Espresso Arts Catering (503-475-3979 or christineh2@gmail.com), when I want to serve the very best coffee and pastries at a party or social event.

The above photo shows Christine at a Stumptown cupping at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland during the NW Barista Competition. Photo credit belongs to Serena Davidson, an excellent photographer based in Portland, Oregon.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Helps Charities Selling Conference Registration on EBay

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)  is putting its money where its mouth is.  It is trying to raise $20,000 for charity by auctioning 20 passes to its  Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference conference on eBay with 100% of proceeds going to various charities including the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. To learn more about how to buy conference admission via EBay, check out this link.  The Conference will take place on January 19-20 in Orlando, Florida, and I hope to see you there.

Special $100 Discount for Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference

If you are interested in building your business with buzz and have been thinking about going to the Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference that the Word of Mouth Marketing Organization  (WOMMA) will hold in Orlando, Florida from January 19-20, 2006,  now is your chance to sign up and save off the conference fee just because you're a reader of this blog. When you fill out the online registration form, fill in "patricksentme" in the discount code section and you'll save $100 off the regular conference fee.

This is the first conference on buzz marketing that really focuses on valuable "how-to" lessons for creating buzz rather than theories about buzz. The lists of speakers and attendees are truly impressive. If you plan on going, please let me know. I look forward to meeting readers of this blog in Orlando.

If you are interested in building your business with buzz and have been thinking about going to the Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference that the Word of Mouth Marketing Organization  (WOMMA) will hold in Orlando, Florida from January 19-20, 2006,  now is your chance to sign up and save off the conference fee just because you're a reader of this blog. When you fill out the online registration form, fill in "patricksentme" in the discount code section and you'll save $100 off the regular conference fee.

This is the first conference on buzz marketing that really focuses on valuable "how-to" lessons for creating buzz rather than theories about buzz. The lists of speakers and attendees are truly impressive. If you plan on going, please let me know. I look forward to meeting readers of this blog in Orlando.