NRS buzz: The in-thing at hip parties

For Generation Cool, 2004 is the Year of the Buzz. It’s about a connected generation buzzing others about delightful experiences. Buzz touches the hearts and minds of customers; they feel what they speak. Buzz is exhilaration about anything amazing. Buzz does not remain restricted to customer-pockets but spreads like a virus.
Unlike viral marketing, which is spurred by the net, buzz is as old as the savvy customer. Its informality appeals to strategy gurus, who keep on revisiting and reinventing it. Buzz is a marketer’s surest way of knowing whether a brand is constantly rethinking itself. For buzz feeds on innovation.
We, at The Times of India, have always believed in buzz power. Our ideas don’t just swarm the market; they infect it. In the lingo of Tipping Point guru Malcolm Gladwell, they create a positive social epidemic. In Delhi, for instance, an idea called TOI has spread like infection. It’s an idea that identifies itself with Generation Cool, wears their attitudes, speaks their aspirations, and inspires them. It’s an idea-wave that has created a wow epidemic. Readership metrics profile the past; wow metrics profile the future. In the world of wow, customers spread the good word. They create tomorrow’s readerships.
Of course, the success of a hip knowledge product depends on buzzers — the delighted customers. Are TOI’s buzzers, its viral marketers, part of Generation Cool? We know the answer: We belong to the young. Our product espouses the values they stand for. Like Sony’s Playstation, we are a cool concept that has become an organic part of a cool society. In such a state of customer bliss, we do not rely on conventional performance indices alone. Even as we value them, we transcend them.
For TOI, it’s a leap of faith. After all, buzz is the highest form of customer satisfaction. Buzz is the voice of conscience; it’s pure emotion. It’s a customer’s way of recommending a product: It’s the in-thing. In a cool conclave, that remark can trigger a social epidemic. Marketers call it a natural epidemic. Natural, because you can’t graft buzz on cool customers; they are too smart for that. Only through the power of the idea and the experience of the product can a buzzer decide whether to buzz her friends or not. With a content experience that ranges from chillax to thought-provoking, and innovative combo offerings, TOI is truly a buzzer’s delight.
Buzz can create an infection point within the firm. It creates an ideas hub. It’s a remarkable change for the organisation, since it thinks beyond market share and profits. It starts with a simple proposition called customer ecstasy and leaves buzz to transform markets. Seth Godin, viral marketing’s high-pitch voice, maps the leap when he says: ‘‘Ideas aren’t a sideshow that make our factory a little more valuable. Our factory is a sideshow that makes our ideas a little more valuable.’’
In the world of ideas, we can often be distracted by sideshows: competitive rivalry, market one-upmanship, readership claims. Those who believe in side-shows compete in side-shows. They miss the next big thing. In due course, they either perform on the sidelines or perish.
Remember: there’s no buzz if you don’t drive markets. There’s no buzz without ideas. There’s no buzz without delight. Indeed, that’s the buzz at hip young dos.
vinaykamat@indiatimes.com