What happens when you “manipulate” buzz
Pete Blackshaw over at CGM picks up on a post by the Freakonomics guys in which they argue that the fact that there was such a discrepancy between the pre-release Internet buzz for the movie “Snakes on a Plane,” and the actual success of the movie at the box office, may be attributed to “manufactured buzz.”
One conclusion which Steven Levitt at Freakonomics comes to when answering the question “what does or does not make Internet buzz translate into commercial success” is “One reasonable answer to that question may be that when the buzz is faked/manufactured, commercial success will not follow.”
Whether intentional or not, “manufactured buzz,” along with other viral “gaming-the-system” marketing strategies are just another threat to the future credibility of word of mouth marketing - another one being the lack of disclosure policy which some companies refuse to endorse.
[Tags: wom word of mouth marketing buzz marketing viral marketing ]
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August 30th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Or, mebbe people are just smarter than they’re given credit for when we palaver about the effect of buzz and such. I mean, snakes on a plane? Pretty much a one note plot - and there’s not much room (literally or figuratively) for interesting plot developments.