People do tend to pay more attention to the bad than the good but if you have something really good, valuable, and/or interesting, it’ll still get shared. It only takes a few mentions to spread all over.

the ratio will go way down because people will need gasoline , while coca-cola … they can live without it .

there needs to be a clear distinction between these two major categories of products :

- the ones we need

- the ones we could do without .

i think that this article only applies to the second category . when it comes to the first … people will always need those products and they will simply hunt them down .

the only issue is getting a higher slice of the market . and that higher slice doesn’t necessary come in the form of buzz , but in the form of presence .

a cleaning product doesn’t need kick ass ads for it … it just needs to be everywhere . so that people get used to it ( it’s name , it’s logo , it’s color palette , etc ) . and when that happens they simply adopt it as a household thing .

there are 2 types of promotion in my opinion :

- aggressive
- passive

you need aggressive promotion for products people could do without and passive promotion for the products that people need .

aggressive means getting those brilliant ideas and getting yourself wherever you can .

while passive simply means getting yourself everywhere you can .

That is a good question but there is a solution for people with boring products.

They can create “adjacent social objects” to generate the buzz.

More about it on my blog here:

http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/2008/03/03/adjacent-social-objects/

Thanks again.

Best,
Raj

But what hit me as I was reading, was how hard it must be for those organizations who offer the boring products to generate buzz. I also can’t say that I think all boring products are at the bottom of the value chain. (Although I understand generalization to make a point.)

Consider a company that makes household cleaning supplies, better yet, laundry detergent. Talk about BORING! Who is going to get on Twitter to talk about how white their whites look or how bright their colors are? At the same time, the organization needs to figure out how to get the buzz going for each boring product. Perhaps they drop trial packets from planes above major cities or maybe they just start launching gallon jugs at the horizon with a trebuchet.

If there is one benefit that I can see to one of these boring products, it’s that, since people aren’t apt to talk about it, once they’ve chosen it, they are likely to stick with it until it lets them down. The trick is to come up with something brilliant that shines for just a moment, then focus on the next boring product.

Bad news spreads fast. In the long run, only the “right kind of buzz” will give any meaningful ROI.

Thanks for the note about the graph. Glad you liked it.

Best,
Raj

BTW, love your graph!

Thank you. I totally agree with you that having an idea or “wishing” is not a ticket to creating the right kind of buzz.

But it starts there.

Execution is hard work whatever be the kind of idea so the point here is to take the “right stand” towards creating the right kind of buzz.

Have a great morning.

Best,
Raj

which is kinda weird since i don’t believe in luck , in destiny , in god or any of that stuff … but still , i don’t believe that you can simply come up with a great idea just because you want to .

i think it’s just some sort of a spark that you may or may not get and that you need to keep an eye out for . i can’t quite put my finger on it but i don’t think it’s just a matter of wanting it .

great article by the way .