The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I first witnessed how buzz travels years ago..." (more)
Key Phrases: contagious product, expert hubs, seeding campaign, Cold Mountain, Anatomy of Buzz, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Palm Pilot. The novel Cold Mountain. The iMac. Hotmail. FedEx. The Blair Witch Project and There's Something About Mary. According to former marketing exec Emanuel Rosen, they all became successful not through traditional advertising or marketing routes, but through "buzz," that semitangible process through which information and commentary jump from one brain or mouth to another. Rosen also ascribes buzz to creating customer loyalty, which he says is built through the advice of friends, colleagues, or such trusted "mega-hubs" of information as Oprah Winfrey and Rosie O'Donnell. Rosen has spent the past few years studying the routes, nodes, and clusters through which buzz passes and grows, and the result is this well-researched book. While it doesn't throw much new light on the mechanics of buzz, it is at least instructive and entertaining, offering minisagas of the successful buzz behind such marketing triumphs as the dELia's catalog for teenage girls, PowerBars, and the BMW Z3 roadster. Buzz seekers, be warned, however: with the exception of a short chapter at the end of the book called "Buzz Workshop," you won't find much of a blueprint for starting the gears of buzz for your product or service. What you do get is a trove of real-life stories that, if they don't inspire and guide you toward taking your first buzz-creating baby steps, probably mean you're the type of person who should stick with conventional advertising and PR. --Timothy Murphy --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Often generated within the hive of the Internet, "buzz" has become essential to a product's success in today's fast-paced business environment. As Rosen (a former marketing executive for Niles Software) explains, in pre-Internet days a new product would appear in stores; consumers would buy it or not; and the company would then take however long it wished to evaluate the launch. Today, however, consumers immediately voice their viewsAon message boards, review sites, company sites, complaint sites, via e-mail or on their own Web siteAand so have a strong and immediate influence on whether a launch succeeds. Covering the same territory as Seth Godin in Unleashing the Ideavirus (E-Publishing, Aug. 7), Rosen draws on his own experience with Niles Software's EndNoteAa computer program that converts bibliographic annotations from one form to anotherAto offer an overview of the mechanics of buzz. Topics range from how to seed the market at the grassroots to how to tantalize with scarcity and mystery, to how to accelerate natural contagion. The concluding "buzz workshop," complete with checklists and sidebars, is the most helpful, but marketers and inventors looking for concrete ideas may be disappointed by its brevity. Agent, Daniel Greenberg. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: Broadway Business; 1 edition (April 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385496680
• ISBN-13: 978-0385496681
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #147,177 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Beef?, November 6, 2000

By	Randal Burgess (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Hardcover)

I bought this book rather quickly after hearing about the author and the subject matter from Inc. Magazine. While the book is a fast read, is well-structured, and covers the topic of word-of-mouth marketing as advertised, I did not walk away with a sense that I had learned a tremendous amount from it. Most companies and their marketing efforts have used the tactics that Rosen talks about. I also judge books by how many notes I write down that give myself ideas and plans for my own business, and I had very few to speak of.

Rosen seems to have used quite a bit of reference material and put a lot of effort into this book, so I don't want to seem as though I am slamming him, but he seems to have "dumbed down" his presentation for the masses. I would have liked to have seen more stats and research results presented rather than a case study on yo-yos. The "beef" of the subject matter, namely "buzz," did not seem to be included between the covers of the book.

This is still a good book for a budding product marketer, but I'd wait for the paperback version.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This was a waste of my time, January 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Hardcover)

I really didn't like this book. I've read The Tipping Point, and Crossing the Chasm (and other Moore books), all the books by Ries and Trout books, and numerous other marketing/publicity articles and publications. This "Buzz" book didn't offer new thinking. And the "how" to create buzz that other readers liked, well, I found it trite. Many of the examples used by the author are either overdone, been done before, or simply not very interesting. There were a few parts of the book that were reasonable, but all in all, it was a waste of my time and money. Normally I wouldn't even bother spending one more minute with this book by posting a review, but I am hoping that I'll save some other reader from it. Blech.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invisible but Powerful Human Networks, October 18, 2000

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing (Hardcover)

Think about it. How many times have you been asked "Seen a good movie lately?" or "What's your favorite Italian restaurant?" or "Where can I get the best deal on an air conditioner?" The single most powerful but least understood form of marketing is word-of-mouth and yet, until now, no one has devoted to it the attention it deserves. In the Foreword to this book, Everett M. Rogers observes, "New products and services spread among the consumer public through interpersonal communication networks. These networks are for the most part invisible. They often operate in mysterious ways.. Thus we are largely blind to this very powerful marketing process. No wonder that we fail so often in our efforts to diffuse innovations." He's right.

Rosen explains how to create effective word-of-mouth marketing with material organized within three Parts: How Buzz Spreads, Success in the Networks, and Stimulating Buzz. It is important to stress that Buzz results only in combination with a superior product or service. As Jeffrey Gitomer correctly points out, "customer satisfaction" is achieved only on a per-transaction basis; the objective is to achieve and then sustain "customer loyalty." It is not only possible but common for a new product or service to generate Buzz initially but if the quality is not sustainable (preferably enhanced), what I call Positive Buzz can become Negative Buzz. (Even under Rosen's personal supervision, no matter how much perfume you pour on a pig, it's still a pig. The only buzz it generates will be provided by insects.) The "interpersonal communication networks" to which Rogers refers can just as effectively (and probably more quickly) "get the word out" about a defective product or unsatisfactory service. Obviously, no Buzz is preferable to Negative Buzz.

Rosen is talking about Positive Buzz. He explains HOW to take full advantage of the marketing opportunities it permits. In Chapter 16, "Buzz Workshop", he asks and then answers a series of very basic but profoundly important questions. (All by itself, this final chapter is well-worth the cost of the book. I strongly recommend that this chapter be re-read on a regular basis. Competitive marketplaces do have a way of changing, don't they?) Once having read the book, the reader is well-prepared to select and then implement those concepts, strategies, and tactics which are most appropriate to her or his own situation.

This book will be especially valuable to small-to-midsize companies with limited resources but the success of any marketing efforts (Buzz or otherwise) will still depend upon the quality of the product or service offered. All of us now actively involved in marketing owe a substantial debt to Rosen. Revealingly, the quality of his thinking and the originality of his ideas created Buzz long before his book was published. The acclaim he continues to receive is richly deserved.