the buzzmarketing diary

Throughout our project, we tried to learn a little bit more about the trend of blogs. Almost everyone knows what a blog is, and that they are spreading all over the world, but most people ignore the fact that blogs could become a real strength; the strength of the customer! Indeed by creating blogs, the customers are empowered, as they use this mean of expression to give advices about products or services. Marketers are of course aware of that, so they try to contact bloggers and recruit them in order to use this new media which has a great influence on many people that are fed up with ads on TV, billboards… Meanwhile, there are of course limits. The danger of blogs is that a blogger can create or destroy the reputation of a product or a service in a very short period of time… Our analysis led us to the conclusion that this marketing trend will continue to evolve in the future. Indeed, once we are used to controlling information about products, services, brands… we wouldn’t get rid of that control that easily… So let’s blog! Everybody is reading us!

Over the last decade, the Internet world has been undergoing a radical transformation. The Internet boom obviously diverted and renewed the marketing strategies. This trend has been emphasized by the transition from the Internet Web 1.0, which was driven by a “company-centric” model, to the Internet Web 2.0, a more “customer-centric” approach, which is considered as the new generation of the Internet.

Nowadays, we are observing a proliferation of community websites; more interactive or even user-generated. Giants such as Facebook and Wikipedia have been able to build collective community intelligence. As a matter of fact, Web 2.0 tools empower communities instead of institutions.

In this context, analysts have agreed to recognize that buzz marketing through blogs still has a bright future ahead in terms of influencing customers. The emergence of hundreds of “marketer bloggers” confirms this statement. Market surveys show a growing interest of web surfers for blogs. Reference website eMarketer predicts an increase in the percentage of “blog readers” within the Web community. The chart below shows that this percentage will evolve from 50% in 2007 to 67% in 2012. eMarketer also indicates that due to this positive development, advertising expenses allocated to blogs will boost from $283 million in 2007 to $746 million in 2012.

Chart 1

One might assume that, in the long run, the market shares of buzz marketing through blogs will increase at the expense of traditional advertising channels. Companies aiming to reach the new generation of consumers should invest in this type of marketing which will help them avoid a waste of time and money in classical media, such as radio and television, which are predicted to decline in the future.

Not only are we experiencing a change of channel distribution, but also a change of marketing approach that results from the use of blogs. Moreover, the beginning of the 21st century has been marked by the transition from a mass marketing to a more personalized marketing. Nowadays with the abundance of information, customers’ indifference to ads is strongly growing. A Yankelovich Partners study shows that 60% of U.S. customers find marketing to be irrelevant and that 70% are interested in products or services such as spam filters that would help block marketing attempts. This confirms the fact that there is a common feeling of ads’ overload. Companies reacted by seeking to involve customers in the process, trying to make marketing actors of them in order to fulfill their needs and to get their attention back. Similarly to the Internet, marketing is evolving from a “company-centric” model to a “customer-centric” model, favoring communities.

According to the latest news, it seems that the French President Nicolas Sarkozy would like to get rid of TV spots on the French Public Channels, exactly like the famous Brit Channel the BBC has already done. Perhaps other countries will follow, as lots of people are fed up with having their movies interrupted twice or more because of ads they are not fond of. As a result, public channels would have some difficulties in financing their programs and private channels’ interest would increase because advertisements on the latter would become quite expensive. This confirms the idea that marketers have to use other means to diffuse their marketing messages, among which blogs would be very interesting due to their low cost, and the deep impact they may induce. The reform will occur in 2009, which leads us to assume that the number of ads on blogs will consequently increase, as well as for the number of blogs themselves, as exposed earlier. This recent development allows us to be confident as far as the future of this trend is concerned.

Despite the fact that these past few years marketers have managed to come up with efficient targeting methods through a variety of media, today’s consumers have managed to gain unprecedented control over how they can be targeted. Indeed, whenever you do not feel like watching ads on TV, you can simply solve the problem by skipping channels. The development of buzz marketing through blogs has helped marketers overcome this increasing resistance of customers towards traditional media. Nevertheless, this trendy new tool does not come without downsides. Several limits and dangers of blog buzzing are going to be developed in this section.

Limited use of buzz marketing blogs

For starters, although all studies related to the subject indicate that marketing blogs will tend to occupy an important part in the marketing management of companies, most marketers feel unprepared to meet the challenges brought by this marketing innovation, such as: the possibility of ending up with the creation of a negative publicity, the control given to consumers and the continuous development of the required resources. Indeed, even though the advantages brought by this technology, such as the personal relationship with the customers, are like a dream come true to most marketers; they still need to come up with efficient strategies on how to approach them and use them wisely. The core issue here is that the speed at which this trend is evolving forces marketers to adapt to these changes and adjust their marketing model much faster than what they’re used to. Furthermore, the little part of the media budget allocated to new technologies is also preventing marketers of using this new tool efficiently.

Moreover, the impact of blogs on the performance of an organization has not been analyzed in a proper way yet because it’s still a “fresh” marketing tool. Therefore, further studies still need to be conducted in order for companies to determine whether or not buzz blogging is an adequate tool for them or not.

Blog Buzz is dangerous

The buzz surrounding a product or service has proven to be a double-edged sword for marketers. Indeed, the probability that the buzz might lead this product/service to a success is equal to the one that might lead to its failure. In consequence, some companies are reluctant to blogging because of the risk attached to it. For example, the negative publicity that might be generated from blogs could damage a company’s reputation. Nevertheless, this uncensored information that reside in blogs is what attracts many firms in the first place since many interesting conclusions could be developed after thorough analysis.

Another point that can be mentioned here is the fact that it is very important for blogs to be managed on a daily basis. Since blogging is a dynamic tool that focuses on having constant interactions between the blogger and its visitors, the blogger should show how committed he is to his blog. When customers notice a lack of interest from the blogger’s part, the company is the one that will eventually have to pay the consequences because the consumer will feel as if his opinion didn’t matter, and will end up not visiting the blog anymore because of his lack of satisfaction.

As far as “fake” blogs are concerned, meaning corporate blogs that do not clearly mention that the blog is being used as an advertisement vehicle, they should be completely avoided. Otherwise, customers will probably respond to it in a much more aggressive and negative way than if the real goal of the blog was stated.

History has shown that misleading corporate blogs may have destructive impact. We will illustrate this statement with an example.

In 2003 Dr. Pepper/Seven up Inc. created a famous blog to promote a new milk-based drink called “Raging Cow”. Around twenty days later, the blog had an average visit of 20,800 registered users a day. Nevertheless, the strategy used by the company was regarded as too misleading and controversial. One of the reasons was that six teenagers were hired to promote the drink on their authentic blogs. Even though it was a good way to build trust and get a direct contact with their target audience, adult readers saw the strategy as disingenuous and subversive which led to the boycott of the product. The press covered the events and the campaign was later considered as a failure. If opinion leaders may create a positive buzz around a product, the snowball effect can also ruin a campaign. 

In addition, companies creating corporate blogs should be very careful in the way the blog is managed if they want to avoid being confronted to legal issues, no matter if the blogger is sponsored by the company or not. Therefore, if defamatory or negative posts are written about a competitor, the blogger needs to make sure that his statements are true and can be proven.

As a result, not only do bloggers need to use their blogs cautiously, but companies should also keep all blogs under control, focus on the message they want to diffuse, aspire sincerity towards its customers and measure the risk taken by their broadcasted information.

Nowadays blogs are acknowledged as a real trend on the Internet and companies have integrated the phenomenon by using it as a new way of doing business. Blogs are a cheap, efficient and the risks attached them seem very little.

A tool of communication

As mentioned earlier, companies use blogs for external communications with their clients and customers. Launching a new product, creating a buzz around the product, getting in touch with people’s opinions, building up trust and following its success directly… Companies have found a new opportunity to get closer to the market.

The main advantages companies see in blogs are their cheap cost and the possibility for them to keep track of how their message is being perceived by their customers.

The iPhone story

The launch of the iPhone was a hot topic in lots of traditional media, but the biggest beneficiary, according to Nielsen[1], was the blogosphere. The traffic generated by the phone was higher than any launch they had monitored before, as reported by the Chief Marketing Officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “Some 1.5% of all blog posts mentioned the iPhone in the week following Steve Jobs unveiling of the product in January 2007.”

The following technology blog http://www.engadget.com saw its traffic jump by 30% since the release of the phone was announced. The blog covered the unveiling of the event live and received in counterpart a tremendous hit of 10 million page views.

This example suggests that tech blogs may replace other forms of media, because they provide detailed and exhaustive information about technology products. The iPhone is one of those products, but this example shows how some products may interest people in a fascinated way, and how this new form of media may have strong impacts on companies.

[1] Http://fr.nielsen.com/site/index.shtml

From the never-ending number of existing blogs, we chose the blog of a famous Parisian blogger to illustrate this issue: Delphine Desneiges alias Deedee[1]. She is in charge of the editorial page of the Cosmopolitan website. Thousands of people visit her blog each day and post comments. The successful blogger was kind enough to give us an answer to a short mail interview.

“Deedee”, has a good literary background and has started her blog in 2004. In the beginning, her blog was a way for her to share stuff about her wedding, her readings, night outs, exhibitions… with her friends and relatives. Bit by bit, she left the personal subjects behind, which led to the blog’s success by making it one of the most famous French blogs nowadays.

Advertisement on the blog

Very often there are some blog posts about all kinds of products. The bloggers explain why they like or dislike the product, and provide information about where to find the product and so on. In reality, brands rarely contact bloggers directly to ask them to write sponsored posts. These sponsored posts are rather the result of a buzz, communication, or marketing agencies.

Deedee accepts around 20% of the propositions she gets for writing posts about a specific product. As for accepting the tasks, her criterions are quite simple; the topic has to provide some added value in terms of information which might attract readers and it must comply with the editorial line of the blog. In return, she gets paid for writing those kinds of sponsored posts.

At the same time, brands may also ask her to test a product. In that case, she receives the product for free, but doesn’t earn any money. If the product turns out to be good, it adds value to her blog and might interest her readers; therefore, she accepts the proposition to test it and posts her opinion about it. Note that bloggers can choose whether or not they want to post something about the product. If they decide not to write anything about it, it’s their choice. Moreover, they can write positive and negative feedback concerning the products; so if she considers the product is total crap, she has the right to do so! Consequently, brands that are not ready to receive bad appreciation choose not to deal with bloggers.

Contract with agencies for bloggers

Like many successful bloggers, Deedee has contracted with an advertising agency that takes 40% of the revenues generated by the advertisements. However, Deedee has set some conditions, for instance: only ads in the left part of the blog, no big twinkling ads… She earns some money thanks to these advertisements but not enough to make a living out of it. According to Deedee, the idea that it is easy to earn lots of money with a blog is false; it’s some kind of illusion, a myth.

The consequences for marketing:

Clearly, these kind of persons are a bargain for companies. Indeed, they have a great influence on people; they give their personal point of view, which may generate more trust than traditional ads… If the customer identifies himself with the blogger, he will rely on his advice, and maybe buy the product. The companies have a considerable interest to keep their image intact in the eyes of bloggers because they have huge power in their hands.

[1] www.deedeeparis.com/blog

Keep yourself informed: firms know that they need to adapt their marketing strategy according to the customers they want to target. Consequently, knowing that nowadays teenagers are positively influenced by the information provided to them on the internet and that they are fed up with traditional ads on TV, on the radio, on billboards… Companies have shifted from traditional media to more modern and innovative marketing approaches among which we can find advertisements on the internet. Therefore, a strategic approach for internet advertising would be for companies to keep themselves informed about what the consumers have to say. One way to do this would be by visiting their customer’s blogs on a daily basis and keeping track of the comments posted on those blogs.

Blog within the company: another way to stay informed would be to create a corporate blog in order to enable internal and external communication between consumers, but also between the company’s stakeholders. Blogs have turned out to be a very efficient marketing approach since they allow a direct communication between the person responsible for the corporate blog and the customer himself.

Some reluctant people would say that blogs only reach a few consumers because they do not comprise all the information a marketing message should have. The arguments supporting this statement are that the information is written, therefore all the emotional aspect is missing out. Well, unfortunately for them, their arguments do not add up since you can upload videos and images on a blog that affect your readers “emotionally”.

Moreover, a lot of theories have been developed around blogs and marketing strategies; for example[1], according to J.L. Horton, a firm creating its own blog must know that the blog is not created to sell products, but to understand and listen to the consumers. Indeed, most of the time, consumers give advice and ask questions, seeking for a response. Therefore, information on the blog must be relevant in order to drive consumers to come back. Indeed, the difference between a blog and an email is that the consumers’ interest and curiosity pushes them to go read the information on the blogs by themselves. In other words, it’s their choice to do so, whereas receiving information about a product by mail is often not a choice, it’s inflicted on us and we call it Spam!

Use existing blogs as a tool: finally, existing blogs can be used as a new channel of advertising for companies, but it implies a decision process[2]. First of all, the company has to look for the blog that could cover the topic it wishes to discuss. Then, it should choose the blogs that are frequently updated because if there is nothing new on the blog, readers won’t be interested in coming back. The third step is to try to find out who is reading the blog and verify whether or not these people are part of their target group. In order to do so, companies could use the website called Technorati[3], which tracks the different links throughout the blogosphere. The last step would be to determine if the items discussed on a particular blogs answer the mission and values of the company. Therefore, the company should check if the blogger is likely to bring value to the product or to the brand. If the firm doesn’t find a blog that meets its expectations, it still has the choice to create its own blog, as discussed earlier. On the other hand, if an appropriate blog already exists, it could be interesting for the company to propose to the blogger to write a sponsored blog post.

We tried to illustrate this method by contacting a blogger and asking her a few questions.

[1] Horton J. L., “Marketing And Blogs: What Works”, 2003.

[2] See footnote 2

[3] www.technocrati.com

The world “blog” comes from an association of 2 words, “web” & “log”. Blogging is a form of viral marketing where the interactivity of customers allows messages to be spread rapidly. In reality, it engages the customer in supporting a marketing message. It is a sort of empowerment of the customer.

The goal of marketing has not changed: it is still to reach consumer loyalty and to build a long term relationship with the consumer. Nevertheless, what has changed is the way to do it. Nowadays, we often talk about “buzz marketing”, a sort of “electronic world of mouth”, which is part of the viral marketing. The idea behind this is that it’s some sort of generator of discussion about a product or a service in order to convince and recruit new consumers.

We will therefore focus on blog marketing as this trend is significantly increasing. Indeed, according to Technorati, the number of blogs worldwide in December 2006 reached 63.1 millions which represents more than ten times the number of blogs in the world compared to December 2004, to know 5.4 million[1]. 

Blogs are efficient for marketing since they are interactive and dynamic. Moreover, blogs are popular because they are accessible to everybody and there is no need for technical background to put comments on a blog or even to create one. And most importantly, it is free.

Nowadays, surfing on the Internet has become part of the everyday life of consumers, which is why they spend most of their time behind their computers, glued to their Blackberries or surfing on their brand new iPhones. Communication and staying connected each and every second has become a vital need. By creating blogs, they can talk about themselves and their lives, but also about their passions, and last but not least about the brands and the products they like! The strength of blogs is that everybody can read them. Bloggers have become a tool for companies since they have a direct impact on their readers, and one of their main objectives is to seem perfect in their readers’ minds… Bloggers often manage to always be aware of the latest fashion, trends and state-of-the-art technology. It’s their way to be “in”, creative, unique and special, which is the main reason why they are fond of new products, brands and trends! Similarly, as we will explain it further, bloggers can be a constant danger for companies and brands; after all, they are free to say whatever they want!

[1]

By definition, a trend is something new that is supposed to last. Indeed, buzz marketing meets the definition of a trend.

Communication has always been part of our lives. However, it is well-known that the more time passes by, the more we feel the need to communicate. The word of mouth has existed for ages, but it was limited by borders and by existing media. Advertisers have always used communication to attract consumers; through newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Even in movies through product placement! But now, with the development of the Internet, there clearly remain no more limits.

Taking into account that there is an information overload, and that consumers may be less interested in advertisements through traditional media; Internet offers new opportunities to communicate: mailing, chatting, surfing or “googling” and blogging. The latter seems quite interesting to us and we will try to demonstrate it in the present paper.

Three main reasons why you should use it!

First of all, it is cheap. Marketing campaigns are generally very expensive. Indeed, for a company to be successful, it needs a strong marketing department or high expenses in marketing agencies and of course time in order to get reliable market research. Thanks to blogs, companies have the possibility to test their products before making such expenses.

Secondly, the Internet is a huge network of users that enables companies to target every segment of the market. Consequently, depending on the aspect they want to cover and their target, buzz blogging makes the spread marketing messages at a wide scale easier.

Finally, the blogs are a new trend to exploit considering the fact that consumers are skeptical about the sincerity and honesty of traditional marketing. Users who are accustomed to read a blog everyday have developed trust towards this blog, and they are more likely to be affected by the advertising

Buzz marketing is a marketing technique aimed to introduce a new product or service by making people talk about it. In other words, it is a sort of word-of-mouth through Internet. Therefore, the distribution channel becomes the consumer himself which leads to an exchange of information done in a more spontaneous way.

Currently, consumers are well-informed of most of the techniques used in marketing. This is why it has become very difficult to influence and convince them, even with a well-elaborated advertisement program. Blogs are an answer to that problem, because it is a typical way to advertise in a climate of trust. Indeed, blog visitors have a tendency to rely more on bloggers than on traditional advertising.

How does it work?

In practice, the blogger posts a message about a new product that is likely to attract his/her readers. In that way, advertisers have the opportunity to target a specific audience among internet users via those bloggers. The latter are called trendsetters and are chosen because they have the ability to influence consumers’ behavior. Trendsetters have a great power because they are free to positively but also negatively influence consumers. This principle is actually a concrete application of social networks.

This kind of advertising through blogs is also very appealing to companies because it creates a new way for them to interact with their consumers. Blogs are therefore more likely to facilitate the spread of messages and make it more effective. One of the marketer’s tasks is to find the “right” blog or the most suitable one in order for the advertisement of the new product to have the expected impact on consumers.

It’s a well known fact that our generation spends more time on the internet than the average internet user. Indeed, in between our finance, economy or marketing courses, we always manage to find time for Facebook, MSN, Megavideo, Streaming websites… and of course blogs! No wonder they call us the YouTube Generation! The main reason behind this phenomenon is because besides being students, we are mainly devoted consumers.

Therefore, in the context of this course, we decided to focus our project on the trendy phenomenon of buzz marketing through blogs. We are very much aware of the fact that we are targets of new advertisement models, but to what extent? How do companies proceed in order to reach us? Could we make money easily if we decided to launch a blog tomorrow? What are the limits and danger of blogging? All these questions left with no answers have aroused our curiosity. We know we are being fooled, but let’s at least try and find out how and why!