Off Topic: "I'm Evil:" Confessions of an Online Guerilla Marketer

Jack, John and Joe are talking about games.

Jack has played a new game. He likes it. He tells John and Joe, who, knowing Jack's reputation for giving games a fair, balanced review, and that their tastes and his are often similar, decide that it's a game they should try. So, based on Jack's recommendation, they buy the game, as do several other people who have been listening in.

These kinds of conversations are the stuff of legend in the advertising community. Getting a consumer so excited about your product that he'll tell others to buy it is essentially free advertising, and the most effective form besides. Marketers call it "buzz," and they track it as religiously as brokers follow the stock ticker. They even try to create it, by sending trained salespeople, or "shills" into places where normal people congregate in order to get those normal people talking about their product. These days, the tactic has moved online.

Read the full text here...

Russ Pitts

Source: The Escapist
posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:03 PM by Auri

Comments