‘Buzz marketing’ is not a new concept. I recall working with a client around twenty years ago in the PR industry. The PR firm rented out a bar, hired some models / ‘beautiful people’, invited the ‘who’s who’ and the media … and then generated buzz about the new vodka being launched. Marketing 101, right?

The big difference between the vodka party twenty years ago and buzz marketing today is a dramatic change in media. The ability to reach, engage and mobilize large audiences at low cost has been super-charged. Additionally, broad participation via social media and user generated content have dramatically changed the engagement and marketing landscape.

Buzz marketing has now been renamed Word-of-Mouth Marketing and has it’s own association, WOMMA – you guessed it, the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association.

My current business partner and I developed technologies eight years ago which aggregated conversations and ‘mined’ them for mood, tone, sentiment and buzz. We quickly realized that while we could algorithmically aggregate and plot the conversation, this was only conversation based on audiences participating in this media. Eight years ago, not everyone was participating … If we roll forward to 2008, different game:

• Audiences have grown dramatically
• The blogosphere continues to grow exponentially
• Social networking has experienced explosive growth and participation
• User generated content/media … everyone can now be a publisher

However, not all buzz is created equally. Relying on demographics is useful … but not enough. Capturing reputation and influence is also important … but not enough.

The depth and width of the cross-media engagement now creates demands for relevance. Relevance to me … now. The new challenge is that ‘me’ changes contextually … I am defined by me, my personae – not the device attached to me, my personae (MacBook, iPhone, Xbox360, Tivo/DTR). When I engage, I engage with different personae … in different contexts

Buzz was interesting. Persona-based contextual relevance and influence will be the next breakthroughs …

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