Creating buzz is similar in some ways to good storytelling. You build suspense by withholding information and releasing it gradually. You deliver the punch line at the right point in the story. You create characters that grab the audience's imagination. In this chapter I look at the elements that help buzz reproduce itself rapidly in the invisible networks, similar to the way an urban legend or a folk story can. It isn't a coincidence that the techniques described in this chapter are being used extensively in the film industry—sneak previews, taking the audience behind the scenes, creating publicity stunts, and using celebrities to announce or advertise a product. Whatever your feelings about Hollywood, the people there know how to tell a story, and they know buzz. The following excerpt focuses on one technique—the sneak preview.

The children emerging from the first screening of the movie The Wizard on a winter night in 1989 had just come out of a time machine. They had journeyed somewhere none of their friends had been—four months into the future. Four months doesn't sound like much when it comes to time travel, but for these kids this trip was more meaningful than a trip to the year 3000.

It wasn't the movie itself that excited them so much. I've certainly seen more exciting films. The Wizard tells the story of a boy named Corey who takes his younger brother Jimmy on a cross-country trip to California to enter a video game championship. What excited the audience so much was what was shown toward the end of the movie. With only three contestants left in the championship (little Jimmy among them), the announcer let the contestants—and the audience—know that for the final, tie-breaking match, they would have to play a video game no one had ever played before.

For months, rumors about the next version of Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers were circling the playgrounds. And now the children in the movie theater had a sneak preview of it right there on the screen. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have three contestantsÉ oneÉ twoÉthree," the master of ceremonies announced dramatically. "So I give you Super Mario Brothers threeee!"

"The excitement in the theaters was far greater for Super Mario Brothers 3 than for the movie itself," David Sheff, who studied the history of Nintendo wrote in his book Game Over. For about five minutes, kids were able to see the upcoming game in action. New challenges. New tricks. It's not difficult to imagine what these children did first thing after they got home. They did what any reasonable person would do after being in a time machine—they called all their friends and told them what they knew. "Mario can fly now, and they have these whistles that take you to any level you want!" In the following days each one of them tried to tell as many other kids about it as he or she could. As more and more children went to see the movie, kids were increasingly geared up for the release. When Super Mario Brothers 3 hit the stores, it outsold any video game in history up to that point and grossed more than $500 million. The special arrangement between Nintendo and Universal Studios resulted in this sneak preview, which was one of the factors that generated phenomenal buzz for the game.

Also in this chapter: • Tantalize with Scarcity and Mystery • Go Beyond the Obvious • Take People Behind the Scenes • Be a Little Outrageous • Give Them a Hero • How Events Create Buzz