The Seven Principles of WOM and Buzz Marketing: Crossing the Tipping Point

Citation

Taran, Z. (2012), "The Seven Principles of WOM and Buzz Marketing: Crossing the Tipping Point", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 163-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761211206410

The book formulates seven principles for creating a buzz marketing/word‐of‐mouth (WOM) campaign so powerful as to make a product spread like an epidemic.

The authors provide recommendations following from careful analysis, with a theoretical base and grounded in serious empirical research. Points are illustrated with multiple examples; contentions are supported by references to extant research or, at the very least, Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller The Tipping Point. The writing style is somewhat dry and academic due to the amount of information and thought condensed in the text.

Each principle is first illustrated with a brief vignette representing typical consumers, then explained based on theoretical grounds, and finally applied to a real‐life company case. For each principle, the authors provide a set of action checkpoints.

Below are brief descriptions of the principles according to Mourdoukoutas and Siomkos:

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  Begin with the consumer. To become the kind of a product whose popularity spreads like wildfire, manufacturers should “provide a product or a service that fills genuine consumer needs and desires. Provide a product or a service that stirs up consumer emotions. Meet, engage, employ, and even partner with the consumer” (p. 9). Thus, Red Bull satisfied the need for quick energy drinks, and SUVs fulfilled the need for “Macho” driving (Table 2.2, p. 12).

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  Be innovative. What matters is the “number of distinct and separate features from conventional competing products that stir up emotion and desire, seducing consumer fantasy” (p. 19). To make an impact, innovation must be simple for the consumer and provide observable benefits. It should also be followed up with innovation enhancements and offer low risk of adoption and ease of trial. Mastering innovation by the Apple Corporation is used to illustrate the innovation principle.

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  Target the right group. Based on their attitudes toward innovation, consumers can be classified as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. To cross the tipping point, the company must be able to cross the chasm between the visionary early adopters and the crowd‐following early majority. The authors point out that “innovators can help create a market niche for the product, but they cannot help the product reach the mass market” (p. 36), which is why TiVo has not reached the tipping point.

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  Create the right message. “Make the message appealing, clear, credible, transparent, direct and sticky by using characters and stories that consumers are familiar with and can easily memorize and recall the moment they make their purchase decisions” (p. 41). The message focus must shift as the product gains acceptance by new groups. The message for the innovators should focus on newness and innovativeness; early adopters care more about the product uses and performance/quality, and the early majority will respond best to proven product performance/brand reliability. A message for the late majority should emphasize simplicity, ease of use, availability, convenience, pricing, etc; and price discounts should be the focus of a message designed with the laggards in mind.

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  Find the right context (environment). “Find the right social context, the right place that nurtures innovators and early adopters and the right time, to let these groups spread the message. Adjust your message to reflect changes in the context” (p. 51). The best place to launch a “consumer epidemics” campaign would have reputation that fits the message, be highly visible, and have large population density where people interact frequently and have enabling social structure (in particular, open culture conducive to new ideas) as well as the right climate. For example, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are the best places to launch computer‐related products.

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  Launch a WOM (Word‐of‐Mouth) campaign. “Identify … consumers who are more effective in influencing others” and who will “tell their neighbors, their friends, their coworkers and fellow club‐members. Target, support and re‐enforce your campaign with viral marketing” (p. 62). WOM campaigns have distinct advantages over traditional advertising in that they engage consumers, reach “ad‐allergic” consumers, are inexpensive, personal and “involve a great deal of consumer trust” (p. 66). They also have some disadvantages: they are hard to monitor and evaluate, can go out of control and become “a vehicle of lamentation,” are hard to reverse, are not any easier than traditional devices to create, and oftentimes fail to connect. A WOM campaign should be supplemented by a traditional campaign.

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  Turn WOM into buzz. “Stir up interest and desire in the product that fuel hype and contagion. Turn hype and contagion into herd‐like consumer behavior that helps products across the “chasms,” especially the chasm between early adopters and early majority” (p. 78). Choose the right targets by carefully monitoring consumer relations and interactions and listening to their concerns. Stir up interest in the products (for example, by exposing consumers to controversy). Transform interest into desire and passion; hire “mass seducers” to help. Finally, keep the hype alive by “providing hints of the next product to come, and the pleasure it saves for consumers” (p. 90).

For all the practical value of the book, it has somewhat of an academic feel to it. This book provides careful analysis of all the issues involved, it does not leave any concepts undefined and unexplored, and does not make contentions unsupported by reasoning and prior research. Its language is straightforward and unembellished. Its thinness (107 pages) is somewhat deceptive: it contains a large quantity of information.

This book would make a great textbook in an MBA seminar related to buzz marketing. It is a valuable reference source for any marketing professor to use in classes dealing with word of mouth, buzz marketing as well as spreading innovations. Both, as a literature review and a source of frameworks, it is of interest to any academic working in the areas of social media, WOM and marketing of innovations. Its practical recommendations complete with check points (for example, “keep the hype alive with hints of product sequels”, p. 94) can be quite useful to any practitioner willing to make the effort of working through the text. Its academic prose notwithstanding, the book offers its seven principles as a set of practitioner guidelines.