Buzzing Products

Monday, December 13th, 2004 at 4:12 PM | Category: Meryl's Notes Blog 3 comments

Stephen King, President and CEO of Marqui, asked about BzzAgent and how is it similar / different to Marqui’s blogosphere program.

Like Marqui, BzzAgent is controversial, but it is all deemed a new approach to marketing. Bloggers have said good and bad things about both. Marqui’s program is new, so it’s too early to determine its results. However, it has increased “the company’s visibility online from 1048 Google hits in August, to 244,000 (in one November week).”

BzzAgent has helped create hits for its clients’ products including QBQ! (which I love), Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Unstuck, and non-books like Ralph Lauren Blue. Most of the books (as far as I know) have become best sellers, but a couple of them were best sellers before they arrived at BzzAgent. For instance, Eats, Shoots and Leaves soared the charts in England. Before it hit the US, it received a lot of attention even with well-respected newspapers and magazines.

Another is Seth Godin‘s Free Prize Inside. Seth is already a word of mouth hot shot. Was there any question that he wouldn’t make the best seller list? QBQ! is not a brand new book, but a re-release. Hey, I’m glad word spread about it otherwise I would’ve never known about it. Then there is Al Fresco Chicken Sausages. A New York Times article (free registration required… duh) mentioned BzzAgent indicated Al Fresco was a bzz product. I read the article and I wanted to know more about this product. I found the company’s Web site, and of course, there isn’t a place near me that carries the non-pork product (I don’t eat pork). Miracle of miracles, I accidentally came across the product at Target yesterday. So I bought it. Haven’t tried it yet. No one buzzed me about this product, but it obviously caught the newspaper’s attention and I learned about it there. On many occasions, I’ve read about a product in a newspaper and magazine and put it on my shopping list.

OK, back to the subject at hand… the difference between Marqui and BzzAgent. Here’s the BzzAgent Code of Conduct for reference. BzzAgents are not paid a set fee or even in cash. The only thing they get are the items they review and points for prizes. For every quality review reported about a product, BzzAgents receive points. They can use those points to get prizes—not just any prize… prizes from the list of stuff they have for each campaign.

Like Marqui—they can say good or bad things. After all, bad buzz is still good buzz. BzzAgents can buzz it anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be weekly or in a blog. There are no rules. It could be in person, stores, phone conversation, and online. The company’s risk comes in sending products to BzzAgents. Some may not be honest agents and never buzz anything so they can keep the products or they submit fake buzz to build up points. But the company watches for this.

What do you think of such marketing tactics? Would you say one is better than the other? Why? My opinion? I think they’re both effective as the word is getting out. It’s tough to compare their successes because Marqui sells a communications management system while BzzAgent markets tangible products ranging from five bucks to fifty bucks. Selling a CMS is hard because it is technically involved and it’s not something you can immediately understand and start using like reading a book. CMSes are important applications and it’s a matter of matching an organization’s needs to the CMS. David Suzuki Foundation uses Marqui’s CMS.

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