BzzAgent Tackles The Elusive Problem Of Brand Communities

May 18

BzzAgent Tackles The Elusive Problem Of Brand Communities

by Rohit Bhargava
Category: Digital Influence, Word of Mouth Marketing

What if all the people who were truly passionate about your brand had a single place to gather? Somewhere that they could share content and opinions, organize real life events, ask one another questions, and just about any other activity that happens in a real community. It’s pretty obvious to see the value in something like that - which is probably why many companies have tried some version of it. Yahoo launched and then abandoned their Brand Universe concept. Sites like Squidoo, Ning and Alltop arguably had some version of this vision in mind when they launched as well.

Today, word of mouth marketing company BzzAgent is launching their effort, called BzzScapes. I had a chance to take a preview demo of it recently, and the thinking behind the site is that if you can give members of the BzzAgent community (who number over half a million and are already self-described “brand enthusiasts”) a place to share content about their favourite brands, they will create a valuable community for any brand marketer (and advertiser) to be part of.
The real problem of creating communities like this, though, is taking a role as the primary destination that other brand content can fit under. Can any one brand community become the place to gather photos on Flickr, YouTube videos, passionate bloggers, individual tweets and just about any other form of content about a particular brand? In cases of extreme passion, sites like Moleskinerie … but for most brands, this may be too much to hope for. So instead, someone needs to encourage customers to create these communities and make it easy. BzzAgent wants to be that someone.

In theory, the site is meant to sit at the intersection of what everyone wants:

1. Brands want to find people who are passionate about their products/services and help them spread the word.
2. People want to be recognized and supported (either through sample products or insider knowledge) by the brands they love.
3. BzzAgent wants to be the one to bring these two together in a measurable way (and charge for it).

If you are like most brand marketers, you might be skeptical about the potential for this because many people have tried it before, and failed. The difference, in my mind, is that this time around it’s being launched by a company whose entire mission is to give people real experiences with actual products and services. In most communities that talk about brands, the way for a brand’s marketing team to participate is not usually clear - and the benefit participants get (apart from conversations) isn’t clear either. BzzAgent can add this clarity on both sides … and help everyone get something out of it. If anything helps this effort to take off where others have failed, that will be it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Digital Influence, Word of Mouth Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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10 Responses to “BzzAgent Tackles The Elusive Problem Of Brand Communities”

Tom O'Brien Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 9:57 am
People are out there (unless paid) talking to each other about whatever they are passionate about. This is rarely brands. In our work (over 500 MM conversations collected/analyzed this year) communities that are very brand centric (cellphones, cars, gaming) have brand mentions in about 30% of conversations. In other communities - say food or beauty, brand mentions are about 5% of the conversation.

The conversations are NOT about brands - they are about what the community cares about. Sometimes brands are involved.

I predict this BzzAgent initiative will fail - just like HeyNeilsen did.

TO’B
MotiveQuest LLC
Rohit Bhargava Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Hey Tom - Thanks for commenting. Your point, that most online conversations are not solely about brands is well taken. Those numbers of 30% down to 5% of totals are significant, though … but they are most often spread out across the Internet. BzzAgent (and others like them) have been in business for some time now, surviving on the premise that people do indeed enjoy talking about brands and the products and services that they consume. To a degree, this is the human behavior that all of word of mouth marketing is based on. The online channel is not so different. There are many things to talk about online. I happen to think brands have their right place - and the challenge for any brand marketer is to find where these may already be happening, or do something worth talking about to inspire it to happen more than 5% of the time.
Julie Hall Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Its about time! I have been waiting for BzzAgent to create a way for like-minded brand lovers to connect! Its a natural extension to the trailblazing WOM work BzzAgent has been known for all of these years. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds for them. And see how brands will try to retain ownership of these emerging social nets. How will they integrate?
Shashank Nigam Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Rohit,

This is great analysis as always. And you’re right in pointing out the failures in the past with such attempts. One of the biggest reasons is that people want brands to interact with them on their terms. They want interaction without interruption.

That really means that if they’re on Facebook, then they don’t want to join another community - and open up. Here lies the key. People don’t open up on “branded” communities as much as non-aligned personal ones like FB and MySpace, which consists of people they trust. Coke’s branded community has less than 200 members, and their Facebook page has the largest fan following in all of Facebook. Exactly my point.

Having said that, things might change if they’re given a very strong incentive to join a brand community - and that is something that might work in case of BzzScapes. Will be a good case study to observe.
Melissa Bickel Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Regardless of the outcome. The Bzzscapes in my humble opinion will work on so many levels.

First, as has been mentioned, people will indeed talk about what they like or don’t like. Especially consumer products, whether good or bad. This leads to my second reason.

This is a win, win for both consumers and marketers. In amongst all those bzzscapes could be a potential idea, comment, or solution on how to improve, market, or throw out products which are not working for the buying consumer. A, sort of, consumer test panel at work within bzzscapes.

In the beginning of Bzzagent and the dawning of the effectiveness of “WOM Marketing”, look what Dave Balter wisely tapped into with Bzzagent. Many thought it would fold and go under.

Now with Bzzscapes in it’s infancy stage, I’m sure there will be highs and lows. Any concept well developed and I am sure this concept has been stewed over for many months and tweaked, deserves to succeed regardless of whatever useless chatter there is amid product communities.

Again, as has been mentioned, we’ll see in time. Bzzagents are already used to the “Word of Mouth” sharing, this will just enhance and allow them to focus on the specific brands they know about and love.
Nick S. Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I agree with Shashank. Unless there’s a huge incentive for folks to join the conversation on Bzz’s new tool, I don’t see how this could succeed.
With all of the different online communities out there, I don’t see the point of going to a specific place to talk about my love for my VW Passat. I’d rather just join a Facebook group for VW lovers.
BzzAgent Tackles The Elusive Problem Of Brand Communities | iMarketwell Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:59 am
[...] NOTE: This is reposted from the original version on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog. [...]
Emmanuel Vivier (Vanksen|BuzzParadise) Says:
May 26th, 2009 at 4:10 am
First I think that it is really interesting to see that BzzAgent that was a big promoter of offline influence is now trying to move to or add online influence…

Then I think that most brands are still lost with the 2.0 world. When they will really understand the value of a community they won’t let myspace, youtube, facebook or BzzAgent… manage it for them. Like a logo or their shop, they are going to manage it by themselves…

Too many brands think they can easily check “2.0″ by creating a facebook page that is most of the time never updated, boring and useless instead of taking the times of a real strategy, instead of investing real time, effort and money to build, promote and animate a real brand community that is fun, engaging, interesting…

Facebook, myspace, bzzagent or our platform buzzparadise.com that gathers 8000 influential bloggers in 12 countries are nice tools to help brands reach and engage consumers during a campaign but I don’t think they are going to be the tool to build the ultimate brand community, at least if brand are really serious about it.
PB Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Hey Tom - Thanks for commenting. Your point, that most online conversations are not solely about brands is well taken. Those numbers of 30% down to 5% of totals are significant, though … but they are most often spread out across the Internet. BzzAgent (and others like them) have been in business for some time now, surviving on the premise that people do indeed enjoy talking about brands and the products and services that they consume. To a degree, this is the human behavior that all of word of mouth marketing is based on. The online channel is not so different. There are many things to talk about online. I happen to think brands have their right place - and the challenge for any brand marketer is to find where these may already be happening, or do something worth talking about to inspire it to happen more than 5% of the time.
brian r. Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I think you’ll find that brands that people care passionately about do indeed foster a significant amount of discussion — one in particular is Apple Inc, the Bzzscape for which has accumulated quite a following (http://www.bzzagent.com/bzzscapes/scape/apple/)