Open Source Word-of-Mouth Advertising 168
An anonymous reader writes "Plenty of corporations are willing to hire shills to generate buzz for a new product. But what people don't need to be paid to promote?
Boston company BzzAgent found that their volunteers promote products simply because it makes them feel good. The NYT Magazine interviews several 'agents'. The volunteers cite the feeling of being 'on the inside', like sharing opinions with others, and enjoy feeling altruistic. Has Madison Avenue figured out what open source developers knew all along?"
However, exposure (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't beat True Believers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:incentive is not always about money (Score:5, Insightful)
Jedidiah.
SpreadFirefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is not well though. They are being a little too secretive about the status of the NYT ad, which garnered $250,000 from the community. Threads have begun to pop up about what exactly happened to the ad, and some people are starting to whisper "refund":
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/4700 [spreadfirefox.com]
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=172
Re:Can't beat True Believers (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, zealots can get annoying...
Re:Can't beat True Believers (Score:5, Insightful)
Though, to be fair, that can be as damaging as it can be helpful. A lot of advertising is about association - you associate a product with a certain lifestyle, or try and break traditional associations about the product. In the case of the Gentoo evangelists they do a fine job of furthering the association of Gentoo with die hard geeks. Unfortunately they also tend to further the association of Gentoo with 1337-speaking h4x0r wannabes who just want to look cool and extra-1337.
Please note, I'm not saying that's what the Gentoo community actually is - just that that's the association that a lot of Gentoo zealots (i.e. the most vocal ones) tend to help promote.
Word of mouth can work as much against you as for you. While the evangelists helped the initial growth of Gentoo, they've also helped box it into a small limited market where it will stay until perceptions change.
Jedidiah.
Yes, let's breed distrust among our friends (Score:5, Insightful)
If people actually believe in the product (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is a cost involved with advertising the product then of course someone is going to consider whether they will demand a fee or not depending on how much they like or dislike the product.
If a rich person really likes or dislikes product A then they may spend a million bucks advertising it because they want to. This happens in politics often. A local millionaire spent a lot of money campaigning against a recent proposition. Other rich people campaigned for it. If a modestly wealthy person likes product A then they may seek cheaper avenues to advertise such as basic word of mouth or print ads.
This isn't late breaking news or anything that has to do with Open Source. This has been public knowledge since forever. Word of mouth is the cheapest and best advertising and you can only get it from people who like your product enough to talk about it.
Every company seeks to get word of mouth. This is why they have occasionally steeply discounted or free samples of their product. A limited number of people buy it because of the price point and then advertise to friends and family who then may pay a higher price for it after the sale ends.
re (Score:5, Insightful)
Its about a corporation using people's time and effort to further its bottom line.
(ooops. that does sound like open source)
Read the article. The main reason people are doing seems to be as quoted in the story, not that they ARE trendsetters....but they would LIKE to be trendsetters.
So people trying to be cool are being used by Corps to hock their STUFF in a most unseemly way to me (IMO).
Why unseemly? I'll give you a example. Let's say I am throwing a party, its a pot luck and everyone is supposed to bring over a casserole or other dish.
If a bzzz agent brought over "Lenner's Sausages" and starts to extol the virtues of said meat links... i WOULD THROW HER ASS out of my party.
I invited my guests over to relax and forget about the world NOT TO BE SOLD TO.
Isn't it enough with billboards on roads and product placement in TV shows?
Now they want guest and friends to sell me shit?*
*And no, i don't care if they really believe in the shit they are selling, there is a fine line between a friends reccomendation and a sales pitch. These people cross it.
Oh and can we stop apply the ever-so hip "Open source" to everything?
Mistrust of advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect to hear about good products from other people. If I see an ad for something I haven't heard of my initial reaction is "Why haven't I herad of this, is it no good?" If a product is good, word gets around. I'm hesitant to buy any tech product without hearing other's experience with it on sites like Slashdot.
Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers,
Ian
Re:SpreadFirefox (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, an ad in the NYT is hardly "word of mouth".
I've got five bucks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the latter is not clear, I am assuming that the former is false.
It's just time for Slashdot's daily ads. This is a non-starter. The very fact that I found the phrase:
"Reality Marketing"
on their site immediately disqualifies them from my list of companies to do business with, whatever the fuck it is they're selling.
Re: SpreadFirefox (Score:5, Insightful)
You got that right. Have been a long time Firefox user now, and very happy with it. But shameless call on Mozilla developers and project managers here: get your act together on issues like localization. Take the Dutch translation for example:
A lot of tam-tam was done around nov.9, when Firefox hit final 1.0 release. Parties were organised worldwide, and local Dutch media reported the release.
But in the Netherlands, you'd want a Dutch translation, right? Turns out older 0.9 releases had bad or incomplete translation (so lots of translation work had to be re-done), and catching up for 1.0 wasn't done during 1.0 pre-release period, but mostly started *after* 1.0 final release (sorry, but I think that's braindead project management style). As a result, it took some 3 weeks (!) after 1.0 release, until a quality, 'officially approved' Dutch translation was available (around dec.2). And when it finally was, very little mention of it in local media. But there's more:
As a Dutch user, you'd try some URL's: Firefox.nl [firefox.nl] (used by some unknown party), Mozilla.nl [mozilla.nl] (fake, nothing to see here) or http://nl.mozilla.org [mozilla.org] (says "host not found" here). There DO exist several Dutch Mozilla-related sites, like MozBrowser.nl [mozbrowser.nl], but no link to be found anywhere on Mozilla.org. Also, it's possible to install English language version, locale-switcher extension and a language pack, to obtain non-English Firefox. But no mention, or links to this, on Mozilla.org site either (or damn near impossible to find).
Okay, I know Mozilla is a large project, but how hard is it for instance, to make <countrycode>.Mozilla.org domains work, point those to country/language-specific sites, and provide some basic info on options, status and downloads for translations there? Mozilla organisation could improve a lot here. For Dutch translation alone: Netherlands have some 16 million people, computer use & broadband is very common here, so huge potential for localized Mozilla builds.
"You think that is air you're breathing?"
Buzz Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Buzz Marketing has been around for a long time. Books like the Anatomy of Buzz [amazon.com] have been out since 2000 and have be subsequently refined conceptually into defining who people listen to by books like The Influentials [amazon.com] or more geographically with books like Hub Culture [amazon.com].
It's not really that big of a deal. Buzz marketing is just another way of saying a product web of trust, and Slashdot is perhaps one of the better examples of buzz marketing I can think of.
Let's see in the last few days, people on Slashdot have mentioned Firefox and Thunderbird [slashdot.org], AbiWord [slashdot.org]. and other programs. There are even whole sections - Book Reviews - that are essentially a form of buzz marketing.
The problem that people have is when this is disingenious. Slashdot deals with this by giving you the negative buzz too - anyone here going to rush out and buy a Treo 650 [slashdot.org]? I know I'm not - and I'm thankful to the guy who posted the comment so I am aware of the problems of the new Treo.
Bottom line: buzz marketing - so long as it is accurate, is offered by someone you trust (or forum or what have you) and is appropriate given the circumstances (posting about a bad product experience on Slashdot for example) is not necessarily a bad thing and is often quite useful and good.
Hearing about new restaurants in your area, new software products, or whatever from people that have actually used them and had a good (or bad) experience is often an excellent way to find out about new things. I think most of us would agree on this point. So, don't get all bent out of shape about a 50 cent word used by marketroids.
Re:Yes, let's breed distrust among our friends (Score:3, Insightful)
Is nothing sacred?! (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF?! I would be completely insulted if I invited somebody to my house and they tried to advertise a product.
Marketing has infiltrated our lives enough already, yet these idiots volunteer to advertise and file reports about their friends and family to some market research people. I find that more than a little creepy!
It's amazing that people think that this is not only okay, but that they would volunteer to do it.
They're being handed the items (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, it was not $10 well spent for those mothers. I can't imagine that the peer pressure on the mothers, with all of their kids flocking to the little blipping, flashing, toy helped.
Thinking small (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't beat True Believers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:altruistic? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I've got five bucks... (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone in the advertising/marketing industry, allow me to shed some light.
First off, it goes by a couple names: guerilla marketing, buzz marketing, viral marketing, etc. Some of it is paid, some of it is just because people want to, like in this situation.
Its not MLM at all, its more akin to hiring a spokesperson for a brand except they don't tell you they're a spokesperson. I must admit it isn't the most truthful method of advertising out there, but some people do manage to do it ethically. One UNETHICAL example I can think of was Sony's digital camera. They would send models to the bar with it, and have the models flirt with guys and get them to take their pictures while telling them all about the phone. Talk about playing up on peoples desires.
However, sometimes it can be as forward as the Miller Girls. You know they're there to push Miller on you, but you don't care, because they're hot, and you've made the conscious decision. I hope the Slashdot community realizes that while some marketing may not be the most open, nobody is trying to trick you into a product you don't want to buy. The vast majority of the time it is more profitable to simply figure out who actually WOULD buy the product, and just try to let them know about it and make their own decision. But as in ANY industry, we have our share of ethical and unethical people. Hope that clears some things up.
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
You even almost see the difference on your own when you say "Slashdot deals with this by giving you the negative buzz too." Well, bingo. That _is_ the whole difference between a real review or opinion, and corporate marketting.
The whole "trust" part in that web of trust, refers to trusting someone to give you their honest opinion. I.e., if you think a product sucks, by Jove, do tell me in which ways. I want to hear _all_ the info: the good _and_ the bad.
You also trust that they have nothing to gain out of deceiving you. E.g., if I'm talking about my Psion 5 and how I find it to be the greatest palmtop ever made, in the end I have nothing to gain whether you believe me or not. I don't own any shares in Psion or Symbian, I don't sell Psion 5's, I don't sell software for them. I.e., the assumption of trust is that you can trust that I have no reason to lie to you.
I may of course still be uninformed, pissed off, a fanboy, or simply my uses for a PDA may not match yours. E.g., I love that keyboard for typing, but if you don't do a lot of typing on a PDA, a Palm may serve you better. What I love about it, may be completely irrelevant to you, or may even be what you'd hate about it. (E.g., partially because of the keyboard it _is_ also bulkier than a Palm.)
But you trust that I won't deliberately lie to you.
And, sorry, I fail to see how can I apply that trust to someone actively marketting for a corporation. They're not feeding me a honest opinion, they're not telling me their own experience in using the product (which generally they don't even own), they're just regurgitating a marketting text. Sorry, _what_ can I trust there?