BY VALERIE MILANO My digital video recorder (DVR) is chock full of programs and only the “buzz” from my friends and family seems to be able to convince me to start watching new broadcast shows. I zip through television commercials because I am older and just plain tired of being pitched to. I have countless science shows on my DVR (O.K., I am the mother of two children). I’m also supposed to Tivo Ugly Betty(O.K., my friends are mostly gay). I have come to rely on my trusted social network to guide my TV and movie viewing. I have just laid out, in a nutshell, why buzz marketing works. Buzz marketing is a technique designed to make every encounter with a consumer appear to be a spontaneous, personal exchange of information rather than a calculated pitch from an advertiser. We are most influenced by the people around us and the people we look up to. We are moved into action by our social needs to be in communication with, and be a part of what is going on. Buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, stealth marketing (a practice designed to deceive consumers about marketers’ involvement) and viral marketing (a phenomenon that encourages people to pass along a marketing message) are all put to use by the good folks who want you to watch their entertainment programming. The buzz-makers reach us on the Web sites we visit, the coffee houses we frequent, the videos from usergenerated content sites, such as YouTube, that are forwarded to us on our cell phones. It’s smart and it’s effective. If programmers can orchestrate a permeating chatter, they can create overnight sensations, like that now-ancient The Blair Witch Project . In effect, buzz-makers have wedged their strategy into the vernacular of a generation at very little expense. On the other hand, stealth marketing is a trickier business. Once consumers figure out that they’re being pitched to, well it’s a turn-off, or a betrayal, depending on how dramatic they are. At times TV makes use of stealth marketing. The Gossip Girl enthusiast who is chatting with you or posting a comment on a Gossip Girlfansite could very well work for the show (and often does, by the way). After all, these sites spring up rather quickly and adeptly. This stealth marketing tactic is very smart and very effective and it taps into an old-fashioned social paradigm. It’s the chat with “my neighbor over the fence.” It brings us back to what we already know and trust. Viral marketing works somewhat differently. Imagine that I work for an ad agency and I’m pitching a TV commercial idea to my chocolate manufacturer client. “O.K., there’s this gorilla, he’s sitting behind a drum set just listening, for example, to the music of former Genesis superstar Phil Collins. And then the gorilla starts playing the drums. Does that sound crazy? It might, but this was an actual commercial spot from Cadbury for its Dairy Milk candy bar. Rather than feature the product, it simply aimed to entertain audiences and get them to sign online to find out more about the ad and the product it was pushing. And once one person looked it up and told his friends, he got his friends to check it out and so on. This spot quickly became an Internet sensation in 2007 and had people talking about whether or not it was in fact Collins himself in that gorilla suit. It wasn’t, but it was definitely a brilliant viral marketing move. This new marketing paradigm is a godsend for U.S. public television network PBS because its programming lends itself to Internet search engines. Indeed, PBS’s best friends could very well be search engines like Google. The PBS website gets 11 million visitors per month — that’s a 25 percent increase from 2007. It had seven million views on its kids’ site this past May. According to Virginia-based Kevin Dando, PBS’s director of Online Communications, once a visitor has checked the PBS website, he is much more likely to become a PBS viewer within that week. Dando’s strategy is to put promotions for PBS where people already are. Outdoor billboards kind of do that too but there is a sense of control you feel when you are clicking the buttons rather than having the buttons (i.e., the marketers) clicking you. Dando is against stealth marketing. He wants to be transparent. Of course, he’s got a respected product in PBS that is linked with educators throughout the U.S. Nevertheless, PBS has a presence on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, music-buying site iTunes, as well as YouTube and countless blogs. Michael Benson, Los Angeles-based co-evp of Marketing for ABC Entertainment, had this to say: “We need to be multi-platform marketers and work to make emotional connections with the potential audience in ways that are unique and surprising, while remaining organic to the shows we are marketing.” ABC has utilized many of the aforementioned techniques, as well as texting. Many people wouldn’t mind a friendly text reminding them to buy some movie tickets that have just gone on sale. Personally, I could use a text reminding me to set my DVR for Gossip Girl or Lost . According to Laurel Bernard, senior vice president of Marketing at Fox in Los Angeles, the network openly participates in the community by having actors, writers and directors write on message boards and blogs. Fox has an official “Fox Insider Blog,” where stars communicate directly with fans. Fans dig that. Fans tell other fans. Bernard’s team has created stealth content online for the fans to unearth secret sites or other show tie-ins. For the show Revelations , John Miller, chief marketing officer for NBC Universal, sent out a totally unbranded viral campaign. Sites were put up in ancient Latin and potential viewers were left to figure it out. In order to reach a viewer like me zipping through the commercials, NBC puts its spots in the lower third of the screen to make them more visible in fastforward. There has never been a more challenging time to go into advertising. For creative types, out-of-the-box thinkers, artists, filmmakers, and pranksters, there is a place for us, or at least, there are jobs. This new age of advertising seems to take in the viewers’ intelligence, which we appreciate and will reward by tuning in. Lisa Smith contributed to this article. V I D E O • A G E OC T O B E R 2 0 0 8 22 W h o ’ d a T h u n k I t ? The New TV Buzz Word: Buzz Marketing Laurel Bernard, svp of Marketing at Fox John Miller of NBC Universal Michael Benson of ABC Entertainment
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