Product Description

Mark Hughes' secret of his success lies in the fact that he made his company a magnet for media attention and word-of-mouth publicity by any means necessary. Most notoriously, he persuaded the town of Halfway, Oregon, to rename itself Half.com (his company name). This stunt was called, by Time magazine, one of "the greatest publicity coups" in history. In this groundbreaking book, Hughes offers practical advice on the art of "buzz marketing". He draws on real life examples and explores the six secrets of great word-of-mouth campaigns. An ideal and effective guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311697 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Exceptional Marketing Guide for Small and Large Businesses!
Everyone knows that good word-of-mouth advertising can make a product, and bad word-of-mouth comments can kill a product. Many books exhort you to create such good "buzz" and give you lots of examples.

Mark Hughes does that same thing, but he backs up his advice with a six-step process broken into detailed subcategories of how to implement that make creating "buzz" as simple to understand as baking a chocolate cake with a packaged mix.

The book is spare. Mr. Hughes doesn't waste a word. The examples are just enough to get the point across . . . and not belabor it.

Get this book now before you competitors do!

I was very impressed to see the many small company examples in here that someone can use to market on a tiny budget. The big company examples are revealing too, even if small companies may not be able to directly emulate them.

If you enjoyed Purple Cow, you will like this book more . . . and find it easier to apply.

Started off okay... but then lost it's way
I often enjoy reading exciting stories about how a business came from nowhere to become a big success, and from the reviews I thought this might be an interesting case study.

Unfortunately it was kind of a one trick pony (based on a one-off publicity stunt, and not one that was really associated with the product they were selling)... and therefore the ideas the book promotes are not groundbreaking, and really quite poor.

It also tells a few anecdotes about how some other companies adopted a similar buzzmarketing approach to raising the profile of a product or brand, but none very relevant to small businesses who this book is targeting.

It's really about publicity stunts, which is nothing new.

Saying that, the first few paragraphs were good.

Thanks. Hope this helps. But I would recommend reading something like Purple Cow by Seth Godin.

Entertaining Marketing Stories
Buzz happens when your customers start to talk to other people about the benefits of your product or service. A powerful story gets this process started. So, it's no wonder that author Mark Hughes has the ability to tell an entertaining story. He sets the stage for his interesting tales with his personal account of how he convinced a small town in Oregon to rename itself after his Internet start-up company. The book is full of great anecdotes about brands that reaped huge rewards by pursuing a buzzmarketing strategy, and it flows naturally from story to story. Hughes intertwines his key points throughout. The book is certainly not heavy reading, but it may rejuvenate creative marketing minds. We strongly suggest it to marketers withering under the strain of expensive budgets while achieving poor sales results. Who knows, maybe a little buzz could help.