• Get Free Stuff

    Posted on July 14th, 2008 by and currently 6 commenting.

    I didn’t get to see the full report, but apparently ABC’s God Morning America ran a piece recently on word of mouth companies BzzAgent, VocalPoint and Tremor. The online article gives the basic run-down we’ve all seen before, but I’m curious to find (and find the time) to watch the segment, but what is fascinating to me is the 670 comments on the online article. The vast majority of people heard, ‘if you sign up to be a part of one of these word of mouth companies, you get free stuff.’ And thus there are 670 comments of people asking for the links so they too can get free stuff.

    While it’s no secret that while I don’t necessarily love the BzzAgent or Tremor models, I do agree that those types of campaign buzz models have their place in the world. But I wonder if it’s how the companies were presented in the piece or how the viewers perceived the piece that accounts for the ‘I want free stuff’ attitude. I wonder if those companies highlighted in the piece got flooded with new applicants. And I also wonder how many of those will be active in those buzz campaigns or are just signing up to get free stuff.

    In the WOMM realm, we all have to walk a fine line and never make it about the ‘free stuff.’ As soon as we do, this entire industry will take a nose dive as it won’t equate to anything above a BOGO or couponing offer. And that, my friends, just ain’t WOM.

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress BIG Kahuna

    99% of those people want free stuff. And I would guess 90% of those people make up the results they send to BzzAgent to keep getting the free stuff (of course that’s just speculation). The big question is how does BuzzAgent prove their findings?

    I’m one of their agents (I signed up to see how they did things). It is no different than your last article condemning that other company for writing posts for money.

    BzzAgent is the same thing only you get free stuff and not pay. I signed up for the Tequilla campaign and mustard campaign. I spoke to no one on either but reported 100 conversations just to see if I had to prove anything. Nothing. They took my “100″ conversations for each and reported it back to their client (very happily I’m sure).

    Personally I think this is even a bigger scam then being paid for blogging. BzzAgent sells on the number of “conversations” with absolutely no regard for proven ROI. It’s like people are accepting fantasy land results.

    It’s sad and I personally think it gives WOMM a black eye.

    Is the founder of BuzzAgent the President of WOMMA? Does anyone know this?

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress BIG Kahuna
  • http://theswom.org Jackie Huba

    Great post Spike.

    I agree that there is a place for these companies. But my issue is when they claim to have a network of “influencers.” So are these folks really influencers or just people looking for some freebies?

    I think the companies would be on better ethical ground to say exactly what they are doing: good old-fashioned sampling programs. It is just that the internet makes it easier to sign up for them.

  • http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/ john moore (from Brand Autopsy)

    Ditto all the way around.

    It is still my contention BzzAgent is not in the word-of-mouth business, but rather the maven-making business. BzzAgent puts new products in the hands of maven wannabes … these are consumers who want to be in-the-know and be the first-to-know, but don’t know how to be in-the-know and/or don’t want to be the last-to-know. (You know?)

    BzzAgent fills this in-the-know/not in-the-know void wonderfully well.

    In its current system, BzzAgent is better suited to be in the maven-making business than in the word-of-mouth making business.

  • http://www.point-oh.com Peter I.

    Really interesting. I used to work for a great WOM company called Affinitive where we used to run a lot of rewards-based WOM communities for entertainment brands, like video games. Clients always want to see big numbers, which is exactly what some WOM companies have become adept at delivering them, resulting in these WOM media companies. It really is a challenge to show the value of steering away from the “freebie” and “prize whore” crowd when they are so easily activated. However, what we found was that the communities that were able to stay “pure” and never be listed on any of the freebie/prize whore sites were the ones that generated the most WOM. I think it was a matter of providing genuine brand enthusiasts with a level of access that they would want to talk about and those stories sounded appealing to receptive consumers. However, this was very hard to measure for short-term campaigns and the value was only obvious when you looked at longer running communities that saw steady growing and a high percentage of active members. Unfortunately, a lot of marketers don’t have that kind of time so buying a big group of people from a WOM media company, like the ones you mentioned, serves their needs a little more directly in the real world. I completely agree with Jackie though, these people aren’t “influencers” and higher numbers don’t equate to value in WOM.

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