There's just so much background noise and clutter now that traditional advertising isn't as effective as it once was. In 2004 alone, American companies spent over $235 billion on marketing, more than the entire GDP of Mexico. To add to the problem, technology now makes it easy for consumers to zap commercials and block intrusive ads. It isn't feasible to market the traditional way anymore.

Instead, you can generate better results using media attention and word-of-mouth endorsements. Buzzmarketing is all about capturing the attention of consumers and the media by making your brand of your company entertaining, fascinating, or newsworthy. If you can get people talking about your company and your products amongst themselves, you'll also get more bang for your advertising dollars, typically about three to five times more. In short Buzzmarketing is all about starting conversations between customers.

The Six Secrets of Buzzmarketing

1.  Push the Six Buttons of Buzz

People will only talk about your brand or your company if the story you tell pushes one of six button

• A taboo subject, likes sex, lies, or bathroom humor

• Something highly unusual

• An outrageous idea

• Something genuinely funny or hilarious

• A remarkable sight

• Something secret, along the lines of 'I'm not supposed to tell you this, but''

When you create buzz, you get people talking about your product or service. This face-to-face interaction is great because of the credibility it delivers. The key to making this work is to give people a great story to tell their friends and associates. The juicier the story is, the better.

Time and again, the best rumors and stories have revolved around these six themes. If you want to start conversations, build your message around one of them to provide the seed to the customer.

The traditional marketing model aims to send messages to people and after those messages are delivered and the industry metrics of gross rating points calculated, the job is done. Target met; the marketing people go home. The sole purpose of Buzzmarketing is to make your message so compelling, so entertaining, so fascinating, so newsworthy that they want to tell more people, doing the marketing for you.

So ask yourself, do you want to send messages out to people, and that's it? It'll cost you a lot of money, and you may have little to show for it. A better solution is generating buzz, devoting every ounce of effort toward getting people to talk about your brand, and the media writing about your brand.

2.  Capture The Media's Interest

The easiest way to get people talking about you is to capture the attention of the media and get them to cover what you're doing. The only way you'll do this is if you do something genuinely newsworthy. To increase your chances, do something aligned with the five most frequently written news stories:

• A David-versus-Goliath story

• A highly unusual or simply outrageous story, like man bites dog

• Something highly controversial

• A good old fashioned celebrity story

• Create a story that's already hot in the media, piggy back the topic that everyone is covering in depth

If you really want to supercharge buzz, combine two or three of these storylines in one idea. People don't buy newspapers to read the ads. If you can get your story into the articles, you'll reach more people.

3.  When You Advertise, Do It For Attention

Forget about trying to educate, inform and then persuade consumers. Instead do something unconventional that captures people's attention. All you really need with your advertising is to get noticed, nothing more or nothing less.

On an average night of primetime TV, the American viewer is exposed to approximately 128 commercials and promotional messages. That's too much information to absorb and act on. Traditional advertising has lost its effectiveness because it is now overused. Whatever you do, don't follow the herd.

Buzz often appears to come out of nowhere, but buzzmarketing is a product of design and deliberation.

4.  Climb The Mt. Everest Of Buzz

Be incredibly ambitious. Sit down and figure out what would be the absolute pinnacle of buzz, the figurative Mt. Everest for your industry that 99 percent of your competitors would never even attempt ' and then figure out how to get there.

If a player comes off the basketball court with zero fouls, that probably means they were not aggressive enough. Too many business people work on the basis of one foul and you're on the bench for good. When you're trying to generate buzz, you need to be a lot more tolerant of mistakes. A funny common denominator to buzz is this: In foresight, it's viewed as ludicrous. In hindsight, it's viewed as brilliant.

Advertising in its conventional sense, usually doesn't connect. When you connect with a human being, that's far more valuable. Branding in the corporate style will be a thing of the past. Branding in the human style will be a thing of the future.

5.  Be Audaciously Creative

Identify the most creative angle you can take to generate buzz, and then run with it. Great ideas generally demand courage and persistence, but the results can be spectacular. This will be hard work. You'll find you'll have to go through fifty or more bad ideas before you finally come up with something that hits just the right note, and which comes together well.

While there's no formula to follow to be creative, there are a few guidelines that can help:

• Be courageous- demand creativity of yourself and be willing to cause a stir.

• Define the problem clearly and succinctly, while forgetting about what 'strategy' you'll use.

• Understand the needs of your customers firsthand, and solve those problems in real life rather than in an abstract sense.

• Come up with lots of ideas, and then come up with a whole swag more.

• Initiate competition between two competing teams.

• Pay close attention to names and other words, people are much more likely to talk about your product if it has a fun, zany name.

• Create content you're proud of, not commercials.

Being creative is darn hard work, but at least it's equally hard whether you're promoting a big brand or a small start-up brand.

6.  Police Your Product Religiously

Once you start the buzz bandwagon rolling, it's vital to keep things on track. Negative buzz can undo in a day what took many years to accomplish. If anything, negative buzz spreads even faster than positive buzz. To set up an early warning system:

• Listen carefully to your instincts and follow your gut.

• Get your business leaders down on the front lines where they can see for themselves what's happening

• Survey your customers often, but only ask two key questions, how did you hear about us and would you recommend us to one of your friends?

• Motivate your employees with buzz. Ideally you want your employees to become evangelists for your company. Survey your employees as well and see whether they would recommend the company to their friends.

The key is to treat the generation of buzz as a lifestyle rather than a fad. If you stick to the six secrets of buzz, and approach things methodically, you will get consistent results.

If you haven't given people something clever, amusing, catchy, remarkable, if you haven't given them something they'll enjoy sharing with others to entertain, to sound smart, to sound with it,  forget it. You ain't got buzz.

Schooley Mitchell Telecom Consultants are recognized as one of North Americas leading authorities in Telecommunications. Our consultants are dedicated to helping businesses save money, add security and improve efficiencies.