The best buzz comes not from clever PR or advertising but rather from attributes inherent to the product itself. This chapter focuses on the products that have what it takes to create good buzz—genuine long-term buzz that leads to sales. This is ground zero of any buzz campaign. I call these "contagious products." They possess a tendency to propagate themselves somehow and to generate talk. Contagious products can be grouped into six categories: * Products That Evoke an Emotional Response. * Products That Advertise Themselves. * Products That Leave Traces . * Products That Become More Useful as More People Use Them. * Products That Are Compatible. * Products That "Do The Rest." In the following excerpt I focus on the contagious nature of products that leave traces.

Some contagious products self-propagate by leaving traces of themselves behind. This is especially true for products that allow their users to express themselves. In the early days of desktop publishing, the message "I used PhotoShop" or "I used Illustrator" or the more generic "I used my Mac," often came along with the artwork. The same effect helped the spread of the Kodak camera in 1888. Not only did the camera capitalize on its observability as an object, its products—photos printed on Kodak paper—were specifically designed to be shown to friends and family.

A product that took this idea to the next level is the I-Zone Pocket Camera which became an instant success at the end of 1999. The secret? The mini camera can be loaded with Polaroid's Sticker Film, so it leaves its traces not only in photo albums but on school notebooks, lockers, skateboards, anything. Teenagers take pictures of their friends and stick the postage-size photos all around them, provoking thousands of conversations about the camera, in addition to visual buzz. Within two months of its release, the I-Zone became the best selling camera in the United States.

Another product that has spread this way in recent years is Magnetic Poetry. Dave Kapell invented Magnetic Poetry to help him with his own writing—he would cut out words, paste them on magnets, and arrange them on his refrigerator. "When friends would come over, they'd gather around the fridge and play with it and leave these bizarre messages, and eventually people said, 'Hey, you should start selling this,'" Kapell says. He made some kits, took them to craft shows, and found that what happened at his house happened at his customers' houses—people saw it on their friends' refrigerators, started playing with the magnets, and left their own interesting messages. "For the first couple of years it was all pretty much word of mouth that sold this product," he says. To accelerate the process, Kapell hired sales reps and got into traditional distribution channels, where his product is exposed to many more eyes. But he still has people tell him that they first encounter it at someone's house. More than a million kits have been sold so far.

Also in this chapter: • Buzz and Balance • The Power of Gossip