A group of kids stand outside a cinema hall. They are waiting for the first show of the just-released multi-star cast film, which has had an unprecedented buildup, to get over. They are actually anxiously waiting for the audience of the first show to come out of the cinema hall because it is from them they will get an accurate report of the film. The bell chimes, announcing the end of the first show. The audience begins to pour out…

?How is the movie?? asks one of the kids. ?Bogus. Same old story. Don?t waste your money. Go buy yourself a lassi…? says a person from the crowd, with much disdain. His words make the kids abandon their plans. They melt away into the crowd to hunt for excitement elsewhere.

This type of ?comment? is the basic building block of ?buzz.? When you add up all the comments made at any point in time about a particular film or product, you get what is called the ?buzz? of that product.

Newsweek defined buzz as ?infectious chatter; genuine street-level excitement about a hot new person, place or thing.? Buzz is all the word-of-mouth about a brand. It is the total of all person-to-person communication about a product. People all around the world constantly exchange comments about everything they consume. Be it a new hair shampoo or the latest meditation technique dished out by a guru. Purchasing a product is a part of a social process, like that kid asking the man how the movie was. It is this one-to-one interaction, not the one-to-one interaction between the manufacturer and the customer, that ultimately moves a product and makes it a winner.

In this age of communication revolution, these exchanges use several means of transportation, but whether these comments move through phone lines, via e-mail or echo in a beauty salon while getting a hair cut, comments always start in one brain and end up in another. It is this word-of-mouth that catapults a just-released book to the top of the bestsellers? list. Remember Love Story and The Bridges of Madison County? Weren?t these the books that you read because somebody recommended them to you?

Some products just make people talk. We in the world of entertainment know that every year, the least-expected movie driven by word of mouth, outdistances and outshines many big-budget films with bigger marketing revenues. It is said that 60% of moviegoers rely on a recommendation to go and watch a film. That is why, no matter how much money Bollywood pours into advertising, after the release of a film, the truth is that people consult each other before they step into the cinema.

One of my buddies, who is a car salesman, says despite their daily assault of advertising and using other traditional marketing strategies, the fact remains that people only buy cars when they have consulted their friends. The point one needs to understand is that you cannot generate good buzz about a product with the help of an elegant advertising campaign. The reason is that buzz erupts into public domain via invisible networks, inter-personal information networks that connect customers to each other.

Good buzz is born when a person who has paid money for a product says something good about that product to another person. The blunt truth is that if he does not, then nothing will help move the product in the long run. It will simply die. So get this straight ? when a product is not great, the buzz just cannot be great.

Buzz starts with a superior user experience. We in the movie world are aware of the dangers of scaling up the expectations of the viewers through aggressive advertising. Whenever a product over-promises and under-delivers, the maker has egg on his face. One of the most effective ways to exceed expectations is to price the product below what the customers anticipate. And deliver a great experience.

When Tips Music slashed the price of a compact disc from Rs 300 to Rs 99 and delivered an album like Raaz, it paved the way for a blockbuster. So the mantra is that it is always better to under-promise and over-deliver. One knows that despite all our findings, the need for conventional advertising will still endure. However, the challenge is to advertise in a way that helps to build buzz, not dampen it.

One of the questions to ask before you begin to advertise is, whether or not the campaign can jump-start buzz for your product. Or can the ads themselves be made clever enough to create buzz? The thing to find out is whether the campaign will give buzz a chance to build, because otherwise, ads can kill buzz.

People will talk more about what they discover themselves and not what you want them to talk about. The latest example of this in Bollywood is Anil Sharma?s Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyon. Despite having a big star cast, the promotion spots of this film screamed out to the consumer and said this is another film which does a lot of Pakistan bashing. The outcome was that it failed to even get a decent opening.

Buzz is about newness. The biggest enemy of buzz is routine. The question to ask is: ?Am I offering something new?? Buzz reflects excitement. Excitement does not build around old ideas, familiar approaches, or ?me too? products. Something about the product must be fresh and different. Unless we involve consumers and make our products fresh and interesting enough for them to talk about, it won?t excite him enough to make a purchase. And only a purchase will translate into buzz. Someone rightly proclaimed that buzz greases the great conveyer belt of culture and commerce. Good buzz moves everything, from movies to fashions of the body and mind, faster and faster.

The writer is a Mumbai-based film director