Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff [Hardcover]

Mark Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2005

As VP of marketing at online retailer Half.com, Mark Hughes didn’t have a huge budget for advertising. Yet he helped drive the number of Half.com users from zero to eight million in just three years. His secret? Making the company a magnet for media attention and word-of-mouth, by any means necessary. Most notoriously, he persuaded the town of Halfway, Oregon, to rename itself Half.com—called “one of the greatest publicity coups” in history by Time.

In this breakthrough book, Hughes offers a practical guide to the art of successful buzz marketing—which many people talk about these days but few truly understand. He draws on real-world examples of companies that got people to talk about their stuff— from Miller Lite during the “Tastes Great—Less Filling” era, to American Idol’s stunning use of buzz to become a global phenomenon, to current companies that find creative ways to break through the ad-glutted marketplace.

Buzzmarketing explores the six secrets of great word-of-mouth campaigns and shows how any company can thrive by pursuing a buzz-driven strategy rather than just hoping for a lucky break. Readers who have enjoyed books like The Tipping Point and Purple Cow will find Buzzmarketing to be the ideal guide to applying buzz to their real-world business needs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Remember Half.com? Back in the days of the dotcom boom, the discount retail Web site drew headlines when it persuaded the town of Halfway, Ore., to change its name to Half.com for a year. The stunt helped the company gain millions of customers and position itself to be bought out by eBay for a handsome premium. Hughes, the brain behind Half.com's marketing ploy, extols the virtues of "buzz marketing," his name for the idea that companies can dramatically boost sales by attracting publicity and fueling widespread word-of-mouth. In this book, Hughes lays out the "principles" of buzz marketing, offering a list of dos and don'ts, plus numerous examples of businesses that outshined competitors by creating buzz. Anyone familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point will grasp the logic underlying some of Hughes's ideas. He advocates getting the attention of people who can spread the gospel about your product. This approach, he says, is not only more effective than traditional advertising, but far cheaper. Hughes's tales of companies that successfully harnessed buzz are the strongest part of the book, covering businesses as diverse as Pepsi, Ben and Jerry's and Rit Dye, which revived itself by sparking the tie-dye craze in the 1960s. How valuable readers find some of his other case studies will depend on whether they agree that Britney Spears and American Idol represent "great products" marketed shrewdly. Hughes, who worked for PepsiCo and Pep Boys before joining Half.com, now runs a consulting firm that teaches companies about buzz marketing, which no doubt explains why his writing sometimes seems as subtle as a PowerPoint presentation and as gung-ho as an infomercial. Still, Hughes's ideas are provocative and should interest business professionals frustrated with same-again advertising campaigns.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

There’s fake corporate marketing and then there’s real marketing. This is the real stuff for real people. (Ben Cohen, cofounder, Ben and Jerry’s) A business book that’s entertaining and useful for big brands and start- ups alike. (Steve Forbes, Editor in Chief, Forbes)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1 edition (July 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840929
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840923
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #664,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hughes is the marketing guru capturing the $300 million attention of eBay by literally putting Half.com on the map...convincing Halfway, Oregon (pop. 350)to rename itself to Half.com, Oregon.

eBay bought Half.com six months later for $300 million.

Time magazine called it "one of the greatest publicity coups" in history.

Hughes' marketing career spans PepsiCo's Pizza Hut, Pep Boys, AMSC (later XM Satellite Radio), and eBay.

He is the son of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to Get People Talking and Buying, July 12, 2005

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff (Hardcover)

This book offers a practical guide to the art of creating buzz.

The author, Mark Hughes, was a vice president of marketing at online retailer Half.com. Using a small advertising budget he drove his company's number of users from zero to 8 million in three years. His secret: he transformed the company into a magnet to media attention. He accomplished this coup by persuading the town of Halfway, Ore. to rename itself [...]

According to the author there are six buttons to creating great word-of-mouth campaigns:

1. The taboo - sex, lies, and bathroom humor.
2. The unusual.
3. The outrageous.
4. The hilarious
5. The remarkable.
6. The secret - both the revealed and unrevealed.

Understanding that, the author says, there are six steps to creating a campaign:

1. Push the right button.
2. Capture the media.
3. Advertise for attention.
4. Climb the mountain.
5. Discover creativity.
6. Police your product.

If your company has millions of dollars to spend on advertising, this book will be of little use. However, if money is tight and everything to lose, time spent studying this well-written book could place you and your product in the forefront of your target buyer's mind.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I heard it on the grapevine...", July 12, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff (Hardcover)

Once in a while up pops a quick fix book that is sane, smartly written, witty, entertaining and ultimately useful. Mark Hughes has produced just that book in his terrific little book BUZZMARKETING : Get People to Talk About Your Stuff. How he came up with this idea, implemented it, and is impacting business from little Mom and Pop stores to major corporations is the gist of the book.

First, it seems too obvious to follow Mark's concept. All of us know that we are far more apt to listen to the enthusiastic excitement about a product form a friend, a watercooler discussion, or over hearing a conversation in places such as an elevator, bus stop, or those wide awake moments in obligatory meetings. The media blitz numbs our brains UNLESS there is something catchy, memorable, and quotable that sticks to our brains like magnets. These are the buzzwords Mark addresses - and does very much more.

In 'six secrets' of creating the magical buzzwords are given early on in this book and the six buttons of buzz to start a conversation are 1) the taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor), 2) the unusual, 3) the outrageous, 4) the hilarious, 5) the remarkable, and 6) secrets (both kept and revealed). We are shown that pushing any one of these buzz buttons will immediately start a conversation that will ultimately get people to repeat it...and the cycle begins.

Building on this momentum the book offers the 'secrets' of making buzzwords, slogans, seducing the media, and using the loaded information to market a product. Using success stories to support these approaches (companies using popular stars to capitalize on their product, businesses who build on simple quirky phrases to supplant expensive variably successful advertising campaigns) supplies enough evidence to pay close attention to 'buzzmarketing'.

Mark Hughes is not only successful because of his concept's amazing results, he is also a wonderfully fluid and witty writer. Reading this book is not a chore: reading this book is an experience that entertains while it informs. And wild and simple as the concept is, it works! Pleasure yourself and advance your career. Grab the gold ring before this little book is on the Best Seller list - as it is surely headed in that direction! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 05

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Press Agentry in the 21st Century, September 26, 2005

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff (Hardcover)

What Mark Hughes calls "Buzz Marketing"- getting people to talk about your product- has been with us since people slipped the Town Crier a few extra quid to mention their nostrums in his mightly rounds. Call it flacking, press agentry or what have you, it's the art of getting people to do your advertising for you by creating a story that keeps your product in the public eye.

What Hughes has done in "Buzzmarketing" is to collect a number of stories about how various marketers, including himelf, have used ways other than direct advertising to get people talking about their products. It's not a manual of how to create a buzz, but rather just a selection of interesting stories about how other did it. Creative types will no doubt find inspiration here, but those looking for a how-to guide will be disappointed. An interesting read for anyone curious about marketing.