Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

The Buzz Approach

by Rachel on March 26th, 2007

I wrote yesterday about how to approach bloggers if you want them to promote your product. Now I’m going to tell you how an agency approached me that have not learnt all of these lessons yet.

I got an email from BuzzParadise, a 4 year old Buzz Marketing company based in Europe. They connect brands and consumers and look to be doing quite well, at least if the list of clients have anything to go by. You can sign up with the company, listing your interests, and they will try and connect you with relevant products.

BuzzParadise® is an international platform to connect brands and influential consumers (bloggers, experts, buzzers, etc). We assist brands in creating word of mouth marketing campaigns to generate ‘buzz’ around their products and services by offering opinion leaders access to exclusive information, VIP events or products/samples testing.

So let’s have a look at how they did with an approach.

Personalising the approach: there was no name in the email; they may have read my blog but I’m not sure, as they want me to talk about a campaign (which I do) and a car product (not sure if i ever have). And it looks like it is a European campaign only, so they never read my About page to see where I live.

Be relevant and include a benefit: it’s relevant if I’m just going to talk about how they marketed it. They appear to want to send me something, so I may be getting a sweet gift. But they have not taken it to the conclusion. They want me to reply back to a different email or they want to go to their site and register and fill in the forms. I’m not averse to this, getting on these lists will help me find out about the campaigns, but the way they did it showed no respect. A generic link to the registration page, which resulted in me getting emails saying they were considering me for their programme and then later that they had approved me. If you are going to invite me, make sure the process is easy.

Check they are open to receiving stuff; ensure there are no strings attached: They did that, also leaving it open for me to take part in further campaigns by signing up with them. The email is clear that they would expect me to write about the campaign and competition but I was free to say what I want.

Respect the Blogger: No, not seeing this yet. I filled in the forms and responded back to the email addresses with some feedback about their process (see above!). So far no response. Have they looked at the address and decided that I am no longer eligible? There’s been not further communication to let me know what they are up to yet.

For many companies, outsourcing this channel is essential; neither the brand nor their more traditional agencies would have the skills and resources to do a buzz campaign. for me, I’m not sure where they net out - time to reach out and ask. But be aware the a buzz campaign like this takes a different skill set to a longer term, relationship-building word of mouth campaign.

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POSTED IN: Advertising Agencies, Buzz Marketing