Dinner in The Dark

How does it feel to be blind? What are the problems you face when you can’t see? In Hamburg, I came across a restaurant called “Dinner in the Dark” that can give you a taste of the answer and teach you how to rely on your other senses when you eat.

The experience in a nut shell: You have dinner in a pitch dark room while served by blind waiters. What an amazing way to create a dialog between people who can see and those who can’t. Food is always a great ice breaker.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to eat there, but I definitely will next time I’m in Hamburg. The restaurant is part of a bigger project called Dialogue in the Dark, where blind people lead guests through a completely dark environment and where the visitors learn to interact by relying on other senses. (For locations around the world see here.)

How does a dinner in the dark create buzz? People talk about unique experiences, and this experience sounds pretty unique to me. It also involves some uncertainties and raises a lot of questions: is the cook blind too? (no he’s not) Do they serve drinks? (yes) Is the bathroom in the dark? (no). If you’re in Hamburg, the restaurant is located at Alter Wandrahm 4. (This is where trnd’s wom day took place.) As I said, I haven’t eaten there, but you can read what people said about the experience here.

This is a good opportunity to thank the folks at trnd and everyone who came for a terrific day. I was very proud that I was able to follow some of the conversations in German throughout the day and even to answer one of the questions that was asked in German without any translation (!) This would have made my grandma proud. The little German that I know comes from her talking to me as a child, and she didn’t talk much about word-of-mouth marketing or social media.

Using YouTube to Fight Knife Crime

You have to experience this campaign in order to understand it, so once you read this, please watch the video. This campaign was done for the London Metropolitan Police. It’s called “Choose A Different Ending” and as the name suggests, it’s an interactive film that allows the viewer to decide what happens next. For example, in the picture above, you have to decide: take a knife to school, or leave it in the kitchen.

It encourages you to think about your choices which obviously is a good thing, but I'd love to learn more about the campaign's impact. I contacted the agency behind it (AMV BBDO) and will let you know if I learn anything new. If you have any thoughts or information, please let me know. I think that the creative is brilliant. I'd like to find out how it affects people. Here's the link to the video again.

This is part of my good buzz tour. I'm in Hamburg today to give another talk. Next stop - Stockholm.

The Dangers of Secondhand Buzz

I wrote a short article for WOM UK about secondhand buzz and what to do about it. You can read it here.

The biggest misconception about word of mouth

Contrary to the view that portrays word-of-mouth as the exclusive result of guerilla or non-traditional tactics, mass media can generate massive waves of buzz. The Keller Fay Group found that on any given day, 55% of Americans have at least one conversation related to media and entertainment! And most of these people have more than just one conversation: the average is 2.8.

Anyone who has read my books knows that I’m a great believer in grassroots, guerrilla, or influencer marketing. But this doesn’t change the fact that mass media can create buzz too. When I was in LA last week, I attended a lecture by Dr. Garth Japhet, who founded Soul City—a remarkable organization in South Africa. Japhet was in town to receive the Everett M. Rogers Award for Achievement in Entertainment-Education. Soul City is a perfect example for how mass media leads to buzz.

In 1990, Japhet was a physician at a health clinic in South Africa and he was growing frustrated with his work. He felt that so many of the issues that he was dealing with at the clinic should have not happened in the first place. Children in the poor township died from dehydration, from burn accidents, and from diseases that could have been prevented by immunization. In 1992, Japhet got together with another young physician, Shereen Usdin, and the two decided that the best way to touch people was through a TV drama. They developed a soap opera that takes place in a fictional township called Soul City.

Right from the first season, Soul City has become a hit. It also generates a lot of talk. After the second season, for example, 56% of respondents to a survey reported a discussion they had with others about health issues featured in the program. When season four was on the air, one out of three respondents to a survey talked about domestic violence, which was the focus of that season. And frequent viewers talked about the issue significantly more than those with low exposure to the program. (Watch a couple of minutes from season four here)

What makes people buzz about Soul City? Here are some answers (based on Japhet’s lecture as well as on an interview with Shereen Usdin I conducted back in 2007)

1. Good storytelling
Soul City is not an educational program that lectures people about how to take care of their kids. It’s a drama involving death, love, drinking, and sexual abuse, as well as some lighter themes. The health messages are woven in naturally as advice that characters give each other. The viewer hears the advice the way she would overhear two friends talking. It’s about stories, not slogans.

2. People love gossip
People talk about people and those folks that you meet every week on the show become your virtual friends. As a regular viewer of the show, you talk about their lives, their problems and the tragedies they face. These gossip-like conversations are very helpful in transmitting messages.

3. Leave open questions
The show always leaves open issues one can discuss—who was right in that argument, the husband or the wife? Should the doctor have called the police or not? If you read the comments under some of the most popular viral videos on YouTube, you can see the power of ambiguity in driving buzz. “Is this real or fake?” is a question that fuels lots of discussions on YouTube.

4. Extensive research
Before each season, the Soul City research staff studies the problem they plan to address. For one season, for example, pre-season research included face-to-face interviews with two-thousand people. The researchers also look for the words people use in talking about the problem. For example, in preparation for season four (domestic abuse), there was one word that was mentioned repeatedly by women. It was the Zulu word ukunyamezela, which means “to endure,” and it reflected the way many women in the country thought they were supposed to deal with domestic violence—it’s something that they just had to live through.

5. Pre-testing
The writers of the show work very closely with the researchers to incorporate the issues and the language that were discovered. But this is not the end of research. Japhet emphasized the need to test whether the message is actually coming through. In some cases, people loved the story, but the research showed that they didn’t get the message that Soul City was trying to convey.

6. Beyond TV
Another reason that Soul City gets so much talk is that the drama is so widely available. To reach a more rural audience, Soul City is available as a radio program in nine different languages of different tribes, as well as English and Afrikaans. Printed booklets that reinforce the programs’ messages and serve as conversation starters are inserted into high-circulation newspapers or handed out for free.

7. Multiple fronts
Real change hardly ever comes from a TV show alone. Recognizing this, Soul City works on other fronts--socio-political and legislative. For season four, Soul City partnered with the National Network on Violence Against Women, which ran workshops about the domestic violence act, and details of the law were woven into the TV program. Special hearings about the topic were organized in the parliament. This, of course, was reflected in the media.

This is the second story from my international tour, which will focus on how word-of-mouth marketing can promote positive change. Next week I’ll be in London and Hamburg. The following weeks in Stockholm, Istanbul and Sydney. For exact dates, please visit www.emanuel-rosen.com

Seven Elements in Toms Shoes Buzz

So here we go, I’ve started my international tour which will focus on how word-of-mouth marketing can promote positive change. My first stop was last week in Los Angeles where I gave a talk to PR professionals and got to meet some real veterans in the entertainment PR field including Julian Myers who’s over 90 years old and remembers working with Marilyn Monroe. (He also still runs marathons. What an amazing guy!)

Anyway, we’re here to talk about word of mouth and positive change. I have two LA stories. I'll post the second one shortly.

On Friday I visited Toms Shoes in Santa Monica, a company that does a lot of things right. Why are they getting so much buzz? As always, the answer is multifaceted, but here are seven elements that explain it.

1. Strong message – For every pair of shoes you purchase, Toms will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. The same idea from some committee at a large corporation might have transformed to: “Proceeds from our shoe sales go to children in need. Limited to one pair per customer. Some restrictions apply. Review our web site for full details.” No! Toms shoes’ message is simple: One for one.

2. Good simple story – The story can be summarized in three sentences. This guy Blake Mycoskie goes to Argentina and sees cool shoes. He also sees kids with no shoes. He puts two and two together and starts a company that will make cool shoes and will donate a pair for every pair it sells. The story is supported with videos and pictures that show that the company is delivering on its promise.

3. Mass media – If you read my book you may remember that the first big push for Toms came from an article in the Los Angeles Times. As a result of that article, Blake got 2,200 orders in 24 hours. Blake continues to get a lot of press. He’s been on Good Morning America and other shows. If you live in the U.S., you probably have seen the AT&T commercials that feature him. Don’t underestimate the role of mass media in building buzz. (More on this in my next LA story).

4. Participation – Customers are involved in delivering the shoes to children in need. Last year I participated in one of their “shoe drops” in Booneville Kentucky and I’ve been talking about it ever since (picture above). It was an unforgettable experience—measuring the kids’ feet, fitting the shoes, helping the kids decorate their Toms. Last Friday I met people who participated in shoe drops in places like Argentina and South Africa, and their stories were moving and memorable. Since most people cannot go on a “shoe drop”, the company encourages participation through Facebook, by buying the shoes and by spreading the word.

5. Social media with a purpose – At every contact point, the company encourages you to spread the story. For example, after you buy the shoes, you’re encouraged to tweet “I just bought and gave a pair of TOMS Shoes to children in need. You can too at http://www.tomsshoes.com !” And this type of thinking is not limited to social media: The box with the shoes arrives with a TOMS sticker and a flag (!), so they encourage you to create visual buzz in the real world, too.

6. Self expression. We all love talking about what we create. TOMS encourages its customers to put together “Style Your Sole” parties where people decorate their own shoes. There are some beautiful designs that people put together and those end up on Flickr, Facebook and on blogs. And again, people love to show what they create to friends, so there’s visual buzz in the real world.

7. Ongoing – I’ve been following the company for awhile now, and this is one of the more impressive aspects of TOMS: They are constantly coming up with new stuff to talk about. New styles, new partnerships, new promotions. The core message never changes though: For every pair of shoes you buy from Toms Shoes, this company will donate a pair of shoes to a child in need.

I can go on and on about this company (see here for what Ben McConnell wrote about them), but I just wanted to share a few thoughts. I’d love to hear yours! Soon I’ll post another good buzz story from LA. Next week I’ll be in London and Hamburg. The following weeks in Stockholm, Istanbul and Sydney. For exact dates, check out www.emanuel-rosen.com

Good buzz anyone?

My fall book tour will focus on how word-of-mouth marketing can help promote positive change around the world. I'll be giving talks in Los Angeles, London, Hamburg, Stockholm, Warsaw, Istanbul, Sydney, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas. What I hope to do is have a "good buzz" story from each of these cities. An example for what I'm looking for is a story I reported from Chicago a couple of weeks ago.

If you know of any examples for how buzz is being used to spread the word about education, health or other good stuff, I'd love to hear from you!

Can Street Vendors Promote Higher Education?

When Maria Bucio, who works for the State of Illinois, wants to spread the word about college in Mexican neighborhoods, she goes to the street vendors who sell corn from push carts. Why? Because these guys talk to a lot of people. No, they are not “opinion leaders” when it comes to higher education, and they probably can’t guide kids in selecting their major in college. But these guys can spread the word about a meeting where you’ll learn how to apply for financial aid.

Maria discovered the power of vendors a few years ago, when she was promoting such an information session. Usually these events were attended by five to ten people and Maria was determined to get a much better turnout this time. So she walked around the neighborhood with some flyers and tape. She talked to the corn vendors, to people at the bakery, the church, the library, the grocery store. And in each one of these places, after she explained what she was doing and why it was important, she asked their permission to post a flyer. On Sunday morning at 9 AM, there were a hundred people waiting in the snow for information on how to apply for financial aid.

The Energy Factor
One (pretty obvious) point that many people miss about grassroots marketing is that execution counts, a lot! Ideas are important, but how they are implemented in the field and how much energy is put behind them can make the difference between success and failure. There is a big difference between posting 10 flyers in a local high school and putting 200 flyers all around the community. Numbers make a difference. But it’s not only about numbers. Maria is passionate about what she promotes and it shows. She talks to everyone around her about college—kids on the street, in elevators, in line. “I talk a lot, I guess. So I start up conversations,” she says. Some of these incidental conversations have prompted kids to go to college.

Maria is part of a small energetic team lead by Jacqueline Moreno and Eddie Brambila of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) that has been using word-of-mouth marketing for several years now to encourage kids from low income families to go to college. Their objective is to reach the kids who need them most. Not just middle class kids who qualify for financial aid, but kids from the lowest income families—Kids from families where no one has ever gone to college. They figured that if they want to reach the kids who really need them, they need to take a proactive approach. If they limited their efforts to presentations in high schools, they were going to attract the kids who already are interested in college (typically from families with previous college-going experience). So they started going into the communities. One thing they did was to partner with a tax preparation service for the working poor, a group that provides free consultation during tax season across metropolitan Chicago. They taught about 1600 tax experts how to help families fill out federal financial aid forms. Partnering with the right network caused an increase of almost 20% in on-time filing of these forms in the lowest income zip codes.

Cloning Maria Bucio
Now ISAC is hoping to multiply Maria times 59. They recruited fifty nine highly motivated graduates from the class of 2009 who will live in every community college district around the state of Illinois to promote college among low income neighborhoods. Their goal is by 2018 to double the number of low income students who graduate from college (right now it’s around 14%)

Earlier this summer I gave a talk in Chicago to these fifty nine people as part of their seven week training (they all had to read my book). And talk about energy! You could power the traffic in Chicago for a week with the energy in that classroom. Now, each one of them is placed in a community somewhere in the state of Illinois, building buzz for college. Good luck!

This is the first in my “Good Buzz” series that is part of my fall book tour. In addition to giving a talk in each city, I'll use this blog to discuss how word-of-mouth marketing can be used to promote positive change around the world. If you have any good stories from the cities included in the tour*, I'd love to hear from you!

* Cities currently included: Los Angeles, London, Munich, Warsaw, Stockholm, Philadelphia.