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Friday, December 17, 2004
And we can break that sausage, too 
| | While their tactics raise all sorts of conflict of interest questions, I think the company has handled themselves well and the bloggers for the most part are somewhat amusing (and annoying, in that all-too-consumed blogging self-examination way) about the whole thing. Many of them are facing this issue for the first time. As a tech journalist, we get hit every day with potential conflicts, and at least the Marqui blogging crew has to be upfront about their participation in this program. Marqui, to their credit, is not restricting what each blogger has to say about their product, just that they have to say something. You can read more about it here on the company's own site: http://www.marqui.com/Paybloggers/ |
| | Other outfits covered: KaltAz.com (a 'radio cooperative' that's 'devoted to playing Arizona's local artists') and BzzAgent.com, which was covered in this New York Times story by Rob Walker a couple weeks ago. KaltAz.com is a cool idea that would be cooler if they webcast in .ogg or .mp3, but instead they use Windows Media (so it's silent to my Linux box and to the increasingly ubiqutous iTunes). As for BzzAgent, David Strom says, |
| | This company creates marketing campaigns for consumer product clients. They are a combination of multi-level marketing like Amway mixed in with some new electronic tools. Unlike Marqui, they create buzz by hiring unpaid associates to go about their daily lives and pitch the product as if they were just telling their friends about some new shampoo or dog food or cool gadget. The associates then file regular reports about who they contacted and what kinds of things worked and didn't work. |
| | Not everyone can become an associate, who get free products prior to general release and get a chance to be seen as cool trend leaders but not much else. Of course, for some people that is probably more of a reward than any paid salary. (Personally, I would rather have the cash, thank you very much.) |
| | Rob Walker in the Times says, |
| | At one grocery store, Gabriella asked a manager why there was no Al Fresco sausage available. At a second store, she dropped a card touting the product into the suggestion box. At a third, she talked a stranger into buying a package. She suggested that the organizers of a neighborhood picnic serve Al Fresco. She took some to a friend's house for dinner and (she reported back) ''explained to her how the sausage comes in six delicious flavors.'' Talking to another friend whom she had already converted into an Al Fresco customer, she noted that the product is ''not just for barbecues'' and would be good at breakfast too. She even wrote to a local priest known for his interest in Italian food, suggesting a recipe for Tuscan white-bean soup that included Al Fresco sausage. The priest wrote back to say he'd give it a try. Gabriella asked me not to use her last name. The Al Fresco campaign is over -- having notably boosted sales, by 100 percent in some stores -- but she is still spreading word of mouth about a variety of other products, and revealing her identity, she said, would undermine her effectiveness as an agent. |
| | The sausage campaign was organized by a small, three-year-old company in Boston called BzzAgent, but that firm is hardly the only entity to have concluded that the most powerful forum for consumer seduction is not TV ads or billboards but rather the conversations we have in our everyday lives. The thinking is that in a media universe that keeps fracturing into ever-finer segments, consumers are harder and harder to reach; some can use TiVo to block out ads or the TV's remote control to click away from them, and the rest are simply too saturated with brand messages to absorb another pitch. So corporations frustrated at the apparent limits of ''traditional'' marketing are increasingly open to word-of-mouth marketing. One result is a growing number of marketers organizing veritable armies of hired ''trendsetters'' or ''influencers'' or ''street teams'' to execute ''seeding programs,'' ''viral marketing,'' ''guerrilla marketing.'' What were once fringe tactics are now increasingly mainstream; there is even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association. |
| | Marketers bicker among themselves about how these approaches differ, but to those of us on the receiving end, the distinctions might seem a little academic. They are all attempts, in one way or another, to break the fourth wall that used to separate the theater of commerce, persuasion and salesmanship from our actual day-to-day life. To take what may be the most infamous example, Sony Ericsson in 2002 hired 60 actors in 10 cities to accost strangers and ask them: Would you mind taking my picture? Those who obliged were handed, of course, a Sony Ericsson camera-phone to take the shot, at which point the actor would remark on what a cool gadget it was. And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event. |
| | Several people have asked me what I think about BuzzAgent, so here's my joint answer to all of them: It sucks. Where Marqui is up front about what it's doing, and engaging bloggers in conversation (as well as promotion), BuzzAgent and its clients are being surreptitious and false, and spreading a virus of falsity through its agents. Mass market advertising has always been impersonal, and often (okay, almost always) fake. BuzzAgent's system allows advertisers to be no less fake, but in person, face to face. Even if the agents really do love the products they shill, their love is bought. Worse, it comes cheap. |
| | To these kinds of marketers, "markets are conversations" means "delivering messages" through talk. What they miss is that the next stage beyond conversation is relationship. And that relationship isn't just with a "brand." To have real value, the relationsihp needs to be with the people behind that brand. And that relationship takes place in the public marketplace. |
| | On the positive side, however, the supply side of the marketing market is clearly starting to get tuned in to the importance of Word of Mouth, both on-Web and off. For that, here are a few simple suggestions... |
| | First, pay attention to what customers are actually doing, and actually saying, about your company and your products. There are companies that can help you do this, but you need to do it for yourselves as well. If your company and products are the subject of blog discussion, follow that too. There is bound to be plenty of data available, in time, from companies that mine the blogosphere for historical as well as current information, and who follow "The Live Web" as well as the Wide one. |
| | Second, purge the old mass marketing lingo. Forbid the terms "consumer" and "message." The first insults your customers, and the second is something nobody demands. Face it: neither conversation nor relationship are about "messages." I know this makes what we used to call "message development" really hard, but that's too bad. A good clear description — yes, good copy — beats the crap out of a "message" any time. |
| | Third, free up your people to say whatever they want about your company and its products, to whomever they please (as long as it's legal) and to engage with human beings in the marketplace in any way they want. In other words, stop routing sales through Sales and marketing through Marketing. Letting people blog is one way, but there are plenty of other ways, too. |
| | Fourth, bring interested customers into your company. Welcome more than their "input" and "feedback." Become interested in their ideas as well. Any customer interested in getting involved in your company is going to be a highly influential customer as well. This was a big lesson of the last political campaign season here in the U.S. You don't yield leadership from the top, but you accept leadership from what we used to call the bottom (and should now call the front). |
| | We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary. |
| | We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature. |
| | And for those who still don't want to engage us honestly and in a genuine human way — or worse, want to fake exactly that — we know how you make your sausage. |
| | Bonus linkage: Dig the comments below Hugh's latest. Want to make money with blogging? Be as good at both that and something else as Hugh is. |
Flying away
| | My 8-year-old kid loves aviation. Always has. "Airplane!" was among his first words. That's why about the only TV he watches is Discovery's Wings Channel, which features programs on cool airplanes and helicopters and spacecraft. So we were disappointed last night to learn (in promotions at every break) that Wings would become... |
| | I'm glad as much as the next guy that our homeland is protected. But this creeps the shit out of me. |
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