Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing [Hardcover]

Conversational marketing is really a simple concept and one that's been around since people started conversing. However, marketing, PR and advertising departments, especially in larger businesses, don't think conversationally. That's a problem, because customers want conversation, not the "party line." Lois Kelly offers a spot on solution--

"Marketing has traditionally been more like a manufacturing operation, producing advertisements, Web sites, brochures, campaigns, and press releases. Reframed as a service, however, marketing gains even more value through the processes of listening advising, explaining, and teaching." (p. 155)

Companies need to reshape their entire approach to communication to have any hope of influencing today's customers. That entails changing mindsets, job responsibilities, interdepartmental relationships and customer interaction--tough stuff.

The great value of "Beyond Buzz" is that it explains how large organizations can reorganize and reorient themselves to be conversational. Kelly has a lot of first-hand experience working with firms that successfully made the change, and with some that didn't. Her ideas and transformative techniques are not merely theories, they are tried and true. Worthwhile reading for business owners, leaders, and top level marketing, PR, advertising and sales execs.

Lois Kelly has written a book about a compelling and exciting subject, namely using conversations as a method of mass marketing. Unfortunately, "Beyond Buzz" fails to explain how to implement this revolutionary idea.

The book attempts to explains how and why humans engage in conversations. I found these explanations confusing, poorly organized, and often repetative. There were precious few case studies of actual use of conversation in marketing. Most of the examples offered were taken from the world of politicians.

Missing was any usable program on how to implement conversation in a marketing plan. There was also no analysis comparing the costs and expected benefits of conversation vs. more conventional marketing techneques.

There was advice on introducing "conversation culture" into an existing marketing organization. Good luck on that.

The author deserves credit for attempting to construct a conceptual framework for a revolutionary marketing technique. However, I would recommend looking elsewhere for a usable program.

In 1998, during the emerging years of the Internet, Kevin Kelly wrote that "The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention" as part of his seminal work New Rules for the New Economy. His predictions then regarded the ways that connected communications like the Internet would change our lives. Looking back on his predictions, not only was Kevin Kelly correct about the role of technology in changing our society, he also accurately predicted the importance of human interaction and attention in our new networks.

Now in 2007, Lois Kelly (presumably no relation to Kevin) extends the ideas of Kevin Kelly to the actual practices of any person responsible for communicating with a public audience. Her primary contention is that communicators must be worthy of and skilled in engaging a public into a conversation. Executives and communication personnel who work in public relations, marketing, sales or politics must acknowledge that their audience is not a waiting receiver of prepackaged messages that are broadcasted in any number of available channels. Kelly writes that communicators must transcend the technology itself to make conversations relevant between senders and receivers. And in any real conversation, there is human attention.

Beyond Buzz is a great handbook that outlines the many methods of creating and maintaining useful conversations, including the effects of our Internet technologies. I would recommend this book for any PR, sales, advertising or marketing person who wishes to take the next step beyond the marketing fundamentals of price, product, positioning, etc. Or, to combine the ideas of both Kellys, to engage scarce human attention in today's hyper-connected network world, one must create an interesting conversation as part of a human relationship. I am sure that when we look back on 2007, we will see that Lois was just as prescient as Kevin was in 1998.