I happened to catch the front page of Marketing Week this week which drew me into their article questioning whether ‘Buzz Marketing’ (hate that name) can survive this week’s introduction of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 legislation (the online version is here if you care to read it). I found the whole piece to be myopic and naive, completely ignoring the best practice disciplines of viral marketing, (overt) community engagement and user generated content as effective (and legal) forms of generating ‘buzz’.

Buzz Marketing (can we call it Peer to Peer marketing please… p2p, sits nicely alongside b2c and b2b n’est pas?) is about getting consumers to talk to each other about your brand (preferably saying nice warm cuddly things). If your agency’s only weapon in it’s arsenal for generating this discussion is to pose as a consumer in a forum, sack them.

More than happy to kill off the name, but the best-practice discipline is alive and kicking thank you very much.