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The Anatomy of Buzz

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Book Review -- : How to Create Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The Anatomy of Buzz

The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-of-Mouth Marketing – By Emanuel Rosen – Doubleday Publishing, ISBN: 0385496672, 303 pages, October 2000

Reviewed by: G.A. “Andy” Marken, Marken Communications Inc, andy@markencom.com


If you’re ready to jump on the next greatest communications bandwagon, The Anatomy of Buzz is a great place to start. When you’re done you’ll be able to sit in staff meetings and expound on how all of these other firms leveraged viral or word-of-mouth promotion to build grassroots excitement and demand for their proudest. You will be able to hold your CEO and VP of marketing spellbound as you recount the tales of how lesser firms with little or no money built sales from zero to 60 in no time at all using critical networks of influentials and influencers.

By the time you are through with Rosen’s 303-page book you’ll be able to talk the talk. But if you get everyone fired up and they turn to you and say great make it happen, you’re in big trouble. Unfortunately he doesn’t give you enough how-to information to walk the walk.

Rosen points out that you develop product or idea buzz by developing the interesting, exciting, understandable and cool aspects of the product. Well that’s fairly obvious but he doesn’t give you a clear set of guidelines on defining, refining and developing those aspects; how you pick the entry points into the buzz network and how you help guide and monitor/control the flow.

Don’t get us wrong, Rosen does a very good job of crystallizing the successful case studies of word-of-mouth marketing. He also does a good job of explaining why buzz should be a part of every communications/public relations program.

While Rosen comes to the subject with impressive real-world credentials, he is remarkably academic in some of his efforts by exploring and detailing the architecture and psychology of how buzz spreads. It’s an intriguing discussion but since we don’t quite understand how we can control the various buzz hubs or the movement from one hub to another and from each hub outward to the “community,” we don’t understand the value of knowing the infrastructure.

Rosen does do a good job of exploring The Anatomy of Buzz by citing and analyzing numerous examples. However up until his final chapter does he even begin to pay off on the subtitle How to Create Word-Of-Mouth Marketing. The “Buzz Workshop” does give you some of the guidelines on how to develop your word-of-mouth strategy and program. Actually Regis McKenna, The McKenna Group, long ago practiced the fundamental precepts (even though he didn’t coin the word) by focusing on the early adopters for both Intel and Apple.

But what Rosen fails to do in the early stages of the book is add a disclaimer at the outset that the creation of buzz is not really cheap and it isn’t instantaneous. He tends to gloss over the reader’s need to spend a tremendous amount of time at the front end identifying his buzz hubs and developing a strategic/tactical plan in reaching these influences, working with and supporting them. Creating the foundation for the launch is probably the most important and most time consuming/expensive aspects of the program.

While the buzz campaign can take on a life all of its own, Rosen does wisely stress that it is important to closely monitor the campaign. Bad buzz can travel like an Internet virus and you need to know when product or idea problems arise because they need to be addressed immediately. If not the buzz can kill the product before it is fully launched.

Rosen has done a superb job of giving you reams of actual case study examples to help you understand the phenomenon and how it works. It does a fair job of giving you some ideas on how to make it happen for your organization, products and/or ideas. What it will do is get you excited about using the valuable one-to-one, person-to-person communications tool to in your next product launch.

The challenge for you will be that management will want instant results and word-of-mouth doesn’t fly around the world on Internet time and produce results tomorrow. It takes time. But if it is done properly with all the measuring tools, checks and balances in place it will not only be extremely profitable but it will make it very difficult for the competition to dislodge your market and sales position.

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