Blog Buzz

Posted June 2nd, 2008 in Marketer by HN

Buzz marketing has been around for a while now, but I would like to point out one of the best examples I have seen in recent time.

HP along with Buzzcorps launched a campaign for the launch of the HP HDX Dragon Notebook PC. Very simple campaign, where one had to take part in a simple contest, answer a few questions and win one of these swanky powerful machines for free.

The brilliance of the campaign is not in the concept. Nothing new in that. The secret here is not the ‘what’ or the ‘how’ of the launch. It’s in the focused needle-pointed choice of the ‘where’.

Blogging, tech opinions and gadget acceptance is driven by opinion leaders (lead users, as we know them). These are the people who try new software, new plugins, new platforms, and are the beta-testers and alpha-testers who are always one step ahead and in the know.

Knowing this only too well, the campaign (called 31 days of the Dragon, www.31daysofthedragon.com) was launched in all the key influencing sites (31 of the best read blogs / online tech guides / product review guerillas) and the sites have different interesting tasks (from answering simple questions to posting a video of the existing PC on Youtube). Makes sure that the big guns write about the new PC, makes the visitors participate in hordes, and makes them talk about this to hell lot more people.

In short, pin-point, textbook, buzz marketing. Well executed and well noticed.

p.s: Buzzcorps was started by ex-AMD PR guy Chris Aaron who specializes in blog buzz marketing and influencer marketing. Nice niche to live in, at the moment :)

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The Next Generation is here

Posted February 19th, 2008 in Geek, Raconteur by HN

Today a friend’s friend Y was telling us about her 5 year old nephew. Apparently this loveable kid was being remonstrated at home, and guess for what. He bought the same X-box game twice on eBay. (He just won the bids, he didn’t pay for them, Y tells me amusedly.)

Now lets wait here for a frickin’ minute. This is so wrong on many counts. What’s a 5 year old doing on eBay? Wait a frickin’ minute more. How the hell does he even know what eBay is, let alone how to BUY stuff on the site?

I didn’t know what a PC was until I was 10. The internet didn’t exist. I walked to a neighbour’s home to make phone-calls. I first used a mobile phone when I was in college. I was doing a research paper on Google in my Engineering college, when it was just registered as a company, and people were just discovering search engines. Wikipedia and Web 2.0 is still WOW.

And there’s this new bunch of kids, for whom Google, Wiki, mobiles, broadband, wireless, eBay, cash cards, Pentiums are a given. Like TV was for me. Like radio was for my parents.

Goddamit. I’m already feeling old. And I’m just frickin’ 25.

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