Buzz Marketing

Frequent the right cafes in Sunset Plaza, Melrose, or the Third Street Promenade in and around Los Angeles this summer, and you're likely to encounter a gang of sleek, impossibly attractive motorbike riders who seem genuinely interested in getting to know you over an iced latte. Compliment them on their Vespa scooters glinting in the brilliant curbside sunlight, and they'll happily pull out a pad and scribble down an address and phone number--not theirs, but that of the local "boutique" where you can buy your own Vespa, just as (they'll confide) the rap artist Sisqó and the movie queen Sandra Bullock recently did. And that's when the truth hits you: This isn't any spontaneous encounter. Those scooter-riding models are on the Vespa payroll, and they've been hired to generate some favorable word of mouth for the recently reissued European bikes.

Welcome to the Summer of Buzz. This season, it seems, marketers are taking to the streets, as well as cafés, nightclubs, and the Internet, in record numbers. Vespa importer Piaggio USA has its biker gang. Hebrew National is dispatching "mom squads" to grill up its hot dogs in backyard barbecues, while Hasbro Games has deputized hundreds of fourth- and fifth-graders as "secret agents" to tantalize their peers with Hasbro's new POX electronic game. Their goal: to seek out the trendsetters in each community and subtly push them into talking up their brand to their friends and admirers. By orchestrating a tsunami of chatter, marketers are hoping to replicate the pattern set by such overnight sensations as independent film The Blair Witch Project, the Harry Potter book series, and Razor kick scooters. In each case, buzz that seemed to come from out of nowhere transformed what otherwise would have been a niche product into a mass phenomenon.