Product Description

"There's fake corporate marketing and then there's real marketing. This is the real stuff for real people."
-Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

These days consumers are paying less and less attention to advertising. A majority already zap commercials, and new technology keeps making it easier to tune out marketing messages.

Mark Hughes has written a breakthrough guide to the art of successful buzzmarketing-which many people talk about but few truly understand. He draws on his own real-world experience as an executive and consultant, as well as untold stories of some of the great buzz generators of our time, including American Idol, tie-dye shirts, and the birth of Lite beer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302664 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-30
• Released on: 2005-07-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Remember Half.com? Back in the days of the dotcom boom, the discount retail Web site drew headlines when it persuaded the town of Halfway, Ore., to change its name to Half.com for a year. The stunt helped the company gain millions of customers and position itself to be bought out by eBay for a handsome premium. Hughes, the brain behind Half.com's marketing ploy, extols the virtues of "buzz marketing," his name for the idea that companies can dramatically boost sales by attracting publicity and fueling widespread word-of-mouth. In this book, Hughes lays out the "principles" of buzz marketing, offering a list of dos and don'ts, plus numerous examples of businesses that outshined competitors by creating buzz. Anyone familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point will grasp the logic underlying some of Hughes's ideas. He advocates getting the attention of people who can spread the gospel about your product. This approach, he says, is not only more effective than traditional advertising, but far cheaper. Hughes's tales of companies that successfully harnessed buzz are the strongest part of the book, covering businesses as diverse as Pepsi, Ben and Jerry's and Rit Dye, which revived itself by sparking the tie-dye craze in the 1960s. How valuable readers find some of his other case studies will depend on whether they agree that Britney Spears and American Idol represent "great products" marketed shrewdly. Hughes, who worked for PepsiCo and Pep Boys before joining Half.com, now runs a consulting firm that teaches companies about buzz marketing, which no doubt explains why his writing sometimes seems as subtle as a PowerPoint presentation and as gung-ho as an infomercial. Still, Hughes's ideas are provocative and should interest business professionals frustrated with same-again advertising campaigns.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Mark Hughes is currently the CEO of the consulting firm Buzzmarketing and a guest lecturer on creative marketing at business schools such as NYU and Wharton. A former executive at Half.com, Pep Boys, and Pizza Hut, he lives in Philadelphia.

Customer Reviews

Exceptional Marketing Guide for Small and Large Businesses!
Everyone knows that good word-of-mouth advertising can make a product, and bad word-of-mouth comments can kill a product. Many books exhort you to create such good "buzz" and give you lots of examples.

Mark Hughes does that same thing, but he backs up his advice with a six-step process broken into detailed subcategories of how to implement that make creating "buzz" as simple to understand as baking a chocolate cake with a packaged mix.

The book is spare. Mr. Hughes doesn't waste a word. The examples are just enough to get the point across . . . and not belabor it.

Get this book now before you competitors do!

I was very impressed to see the many small company examples in here that someone can use to market on a tiny budget. The big company examples are revealing too, even if small companies may not be able to directly emulate them.

If you enjoyed Purple Cow, you will like this book more . . . and find it easier to apply.

I used this book to plan the marketing for my next book . . . and have been very pleased with the results.

An Easy, Entertaining and Useful Read
Thinking of marketing your products or services? Then you need to read Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes.

In this well-written book, Hughes discusses, illustrates and emphasizes why word of mouth marketing (buzz) is ten times more effective than TV or print advertising. Successful marketing is all about buzz - getting (media) attention, being creative, thinking outside the box, generating controversy, being honest, creating suspense, knowing your customer, involving the public, maintaining customer loyalty through a good product and policing the quality, look and feel of your product. Hughes illustrates each of these with real life successes and real life failures - including personal experiences.