Creating a marketing buzz is good for business

By SIMON HENDERY, marketing writer

The email from a friend is too intriguing to ignore.

"Finally, somebody in a chicken costume who will do whatever you want," it said.

"Check it out: Subservient Chicken."

In the past two months millions have received the message and made the cyber journey to this website.

When they do, they find a site where they can type in a command which appears to be acted out by a man dressed in a chicken suit, strutting around a typical suburban living room at the other end of a webcam.

The links on the site give away the marketing game behind it.

As well as viewing movies and pictures of chicken man in action, you can of course "Tell a friend" about the site, or click through to Burger King's homepage.

Yes, the Subservient Chicken turns out to be a cunning campaign for the fast food giant's US launch of its TenderCrisp chicken sandwich.

As far as campaigns go, Subservient Chicken was a huge success for Burger King. Within days of the site's April launch, it was at number 1 on web rating site Popdex.com.

It was a prime example of effective use of "buzz marketing", said advertising agency Lowe's New Zealand chief executive, Stephen Pearson.

Pearson used the Subservient Chicken campaign as one of numerous examples presented at a mass client briefing on buzz marketing in Auckland this week.

Buzz marketing was not new, he said. It involved the use of a number of tried-and-true advertising concepts, the common denominator being an intention to set out to create word of mouth.

Pearson said the purpose of pulling together a presentation on buzz was to remind clients that agencies and their clients risked losing touch with where the industry was going if they limited their thinking to the traditional methods of advertising.

"To talk very specifically about the stretchy edge of it - being this whole notion of buzz marketing - seemed like a very good way to do that."

He argues Lowe's willingness to embrace new thinking was one reason it this month won the coveted Lotteries Commission account off long-time incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi.

In New Zealand, as elsewhere, clients liked the buzz concept, but it remained a peripheral activity, partly because it tended to be higher-risk than using traditional mediums to get a message across, Pearson said.

"You do have to, by its very definition, take a greater level of risk. If you really want people to have a look and pass the stuff on then it's almost inevitably going to offend or at the very least provoke [the audience].

"It's still alternative media. Stuff that's deliberately setting out to create word of mouth is a new notion. Not only is it new, but because it's less controllable people are slower to embrace it."

Another case study highlighted by Pearson is Lowe's own 2002 V24 campaign for Vodafone aired around drama series 24, where viewers had to guess the outcome of a 24-second challenge and text in their entry.

The irreverent challenges included how many bras could a kiwi bloke undo in 24 seconds.

Pearson said the award-winning campaign was spectacularly successful in creating a buzz around a programming event, getting a large number of people participating in the game, and improving ratings for the show it was based around.

He said a benefit of buzz campaigns is that they can be easily evaluated by measuring response rates such as internet site hits.

It was important, however, to clearly define a buzz campaign's objectives and have a clear notion of where the campaign fitted within a brand's overall marketing.

What is buzz marketing?

* Where a company or organisation sets out deliberately to create chatter - the buzz generated by people communicating one-on-one.

* Must have the illusion of spontaneity and authenticity must be a key driver.

* Appears to be a cool message generated by your peers and not by a company.