Even before Social Media was conceived, good Buzz (or hype-based) Marketing concepts have always served effective springboard head-starts, proving their point right down to the dollars and cents. However, it's also evident that marketers may make the mistake of expecting too much from a Buzz campaign; a lack of proper follow-up from successful Buzz Marketing is tantamount to just a very short term success.

It's slightly serendipitous how I got down to writing this; I found an interesting link from a friend's Facebook feed and thought I'd check it out:

Here's the link to the above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAtkoje4-eM

I was like wow this is really quite a cool piece of technology for a car but what caught my attention even more was the number of eyeballs and ratings it received.... It's over 3.2 million views!

Instinctively, I was prompted to check out how they fared in terms of site traffic and I saw 700+K; looks disappointing but I thought I should perhaps roll back and check the date of the video:

September 07.. that's amost 2 years ago from today... let's see how they fared on Alexa back then:

EUREKA! So they really did well between 07 to just before the start of 2008 spiking at a traffic rank of just slightly over 10,000 around November period and quickly sinking off in December. Recall that the video appeared in September 2007 - in good time to show case a successful Buzz Marketing campaign... as well as an unfotunate inability to maintain the marketing traction.

Their website: http://www.disappearing-car-door.com/

These guys are smart to catch the Social Media trend 2 years ago and use it to their marketing advantage. We are starting to see this happening in Asian economies with Social Media becoming the new Buzz word in the forwarding looking Asian countries just only in the past couple of months.

I was at TiECon 2009 in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia just last month and here's an excerpt from YBhg Dato' Mukhriz, Deputy Minister, International Trade and Industry and also the esteemed guest of honor and keynote speaker:

"...The advent of the social media is a prime example. Innovative tools are rapidly shaping our lives and the way we do business."

With this new trend and a whole new arsenal of tools, Businesses should start reviewing how Social Media can revolutionize the way they do things, as opposed to unveiling the shocking revelation when weaker competitors leap frog them.