Chapter 1: Word of Mouth

Overview

A few years back, the low-budget box office battering ram The Blair Witch Project swept through suburbia and became the chatter around town. School buses chock-full of would-be movie crashers compared rumors they’d picked up about the movie. Was it “really” the true story? Were those kids really missing in … the woods? And did the Blair witch really live in Hoboken?

Hmm. Water-cooler conversations about the film couldn’t be quenched, so with a bantam marketing budget that could support little more than buzz, The Blair Witch Project used word-of-mouth PR to turn over big ticket sales and humongous box office numbers.

Blair Witch serves up the lesson that exposure is not only about media coverage; the best exposure still comes from old-fashioned word of mouth. It doesn’t come about by accident, though. Starting buzz on the street level is a deliberate step that needs to be as well thought out as getting yourself on the couch of the Today show, only even more so! Look, here you’re asking an entire community to buy in, not just a producer or two.

The most efficient way to generate exposure is to get word of mouth started skillfully and maintain it with artful diligence. You can do this by using all the techniques we’ll discuss later in the book, but throughout the course of this chapter, we will identify classic methods of provoking hype, one rumor at a time.

The techniques here also handily blur the lines between traditional PR and marketing. This is an important distinction, for understanding both word of mouth and other aspects of PR, so let’s digress for just a moment. Rather than being separate processes, PR and marketing should work with each other to strengthen a unified message. That goes against the textbook approach, but it is definitely true. Many firms we’ve worked with think that PR is a substitute for marketing. In some cases, management even decides not to have a sales team in place, because they think PR can drive sales right to their door. PR is not a direct-response medium. It builds awareness of and perception about a product in order to increase the response rate of direct-marketing campaigns. It isn’t a replacement for them.

One of our clients is a serial entrepreneur who focused all his efforts on a PR launch, with nary a single marketing effort. He called us about a five-minute local TV piece that we’d arranged, which was essentially a free ad. “No one has signed up in response,” he wailed. You’d think he’d know better. Bottom line: PR isn’t a Band-Aid or super crazy glue for business. It must be integrated with your marketing campaigns. If you do it well, and in conjunction with marketing know-how, would-be consumers should hear your message loud and clear.