Product Description

Why is this book $45.00?

* Only a few thousand have been made
* It includes all of the material from Volume I
* Its cover is entirely water resistant and sized to be used as a rainhat
* There's a monkey on the cover (of course)
* Each comes with a one-of-its-kind bookmark, cut from a massive piece of artwork by BzzAgent Artist-in-Residence, Seth. B. Minkin.

Of course, if you don't want to pay for this fantastic, water-resistant version, you can get the entire book for FREE in PDF form from 20 of the big thinking bloggers around. You can find more about that at: www.bzzagent.com/monkey.

And that's the point. The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II is the ultimate illustration of how Word of Mouth actually works. Each element of the book (including the free distribution) was carefully crafted as an example of how you can make Word of Mouth work.

What do Falco and the Grateful Dead have in common? How did Joey Chesnut unseat "Tsunami" Kobayashi in the Coney Island hot dog eating contest? From Tickle-Me-Elmo and Casey Kasem to Crocs and those terribly annoying HeadOn commercials, the book is packed full of real-world examples of what makes people recommend products and services to each other. If you're a company who is interested in how to get people talking, you can't get started without reading the Manual.

The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II is the second book from BzzAgent founder and CEO, Dave Balter. His first book, Grapevine, was released in December 2005.

BzzAgent, Inc. is an international word-of-mouth media network that helps companies accelerate and measure honest, real-world conversations among everyday consumers. BzzAgent's more than 250 clients generate awareness and shape perception about their products and services via the company's growing community of 420,000 trained consumer volunteers. For more information on the company visit www.bzzagent.com.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #799270 in Books
• Published on: 2008
• Format: Special Limited Edition
• Binding: Board book
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

THIS is something worthwhile.
First of all - yes, I am a Bzzagent. Which doesn't make me a "yes man". In fact, I reviewed their first book ("Grapevine") on several sites... and outright said that if "Grapevine" was an advertisement for their service, no one would mind - but it had no actual INFORMATION worth paying for.

Now, things have gone full circle. Instead of trying to come up with a book that is worth paying for, they're distributing this one virally. But, unlike "Grapevine", you'll actually LEARN about what factors will help a word-of-mouth campaign take off. And not just platitudes about how wonderful word-of-mouth marketing is.

MUCH better, Bzzagent. Much better.

Hate to admit it but it's true
I am one of those people that hate to admit I can be influenced by the media or other people. I like to believe I have my own mind and my own tastes. In this book the way that people are influenced by products and the advertising that accompanies it is explored. There is a psychological basis for the feeling of "I WANT that" A really good word of mouth or advertising campaign convinces a person that "I NEED that" If a person was not exposed to a certain product by acquaintances or friends they would not be aroused to want or need any certain product, but I digress. This is a good read. You might want to argue that you as a person are not influenced by pop culture and all that entails, but you ARE influenced, like it or not. An educated consumer is the best consumer. This book is a start on being a good consumer and a good steward of your money.

A bit less interesting than I had hoped.
I'm also a BzzAgent, so I kind of thought that this might be an interesting read from the perspective of someone who participates in word of mouth advertising. As a BzzAgent, I get free products to try, and if I like them, love them, or even hate them, I am free to talk about them to others and let them know what I thought. And that's how I got my download of this book. And when I'm done sharing my opinion here, I'll go report this post to BzzAgent so they can track my word of mouth.

So when I got this book, I thought there might be some really interesting information about how companies choose which people they'd like to help them spread word of mouth about which products (i.e. moms talking about cupcakes vs. moms talking about financial software... does one make more sense than the other? And doesn't it matter who's being talked to about cupcakes and financial software to just as much as it matters who's doing the talking?). But, I didn't find informations on word of mouth marketing demographics vs. traditional marketing demographics in the book, so I was a bit disappointed.

There was a good Casey Kasem story, although I disagreed with his conclusions about why we tend to listen to the same 40 songs. But overall, I didn't find what I was looking for.