The odds are against you.

Of every product introduced each year in the consumer packaged goods industry, 70% fail. Of all small businesses started in America, 80% fail within the first five years. Statistically, the odds are against you.

Yet there are certain brands, big and small, that break away from the pack and discover success--despite the odds. Those brands get buzz. Those brands have discovered buzz marketing. You can discover the fruits of buzz marketing too.

I've worked for big brands, running $40 million marketing budgets. I've learned first-hand that spending millions of dollars using conventional marketing simply doesn't work. America spends more money on advertising than Mexico's entire Gross Domestic Product ($230 billion + each year). Is all that money going to waste? Not all of it, but a big chunk of $230 billion is going to waste.

Just imagine if you could make your marketing dollars ten times more powerful. You don't have to imagine any more. You can make your marketing dollars ten times more powerful. You can, by following a path of buzz marketing. You'll need to--the odds are against you.

What is buzz marketing? It's unconventional, it's economical, and it's powerful. Buzz marketing is: capturing the attention of consumers and the media to the point where talking about your brand becomes entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy. Buzz marketing is about starting conversations. In a nutshell, buzz marketing is about getting people talking and getting the media writing about your brand. If your marketing isn't starting conversations, the odds are against you.

Right now, the most respected (and expensive) consulting firms like McKinsey & Company are analyzing buzz and buzz marketing. They're giving it their own label (?explosive self-generating demand?). And they're obviously going to charge some big-time consulting fees.

You could pay $250,000 to a big-time consulting firm for the secrets of buzz marketing...or you could pay about $25 for this book and learn the secrets of buzz marketing from someone who's actually done it, lived it, and made a fair amount of money doing it. This book just might save you $249,975.

But, you say, McKinsey is chock-full of top MBA's with experience in Fortune 500 companies. Yes they are, and they are undoubtedly some of the brightest people in the world. You'll note that my resume includes a Columbia MBA, excellent quantitative skills, five years with PepsiCo's Pizza Hut division, and ass-on-the-line experience running multi-million dollar marketing budgets for national retailers. Been there, done that.

Amazingly, the true secrets of buzz marketing are not found in big business. The true secrets of buzz marketing are found by experiencing both big brand marketing and small start-up marketing. Only by experiencing both worlds, can you understand the value of buzz marketing, and how it can stretch your marketing dollar. Only by experiencing both worlds can you see how often dollars are wasted in pursuit of conventional marketing. Only by experiencing both worlds can you see how marketing dollars are multiplied by buzz marketing.

I built a small start-up brand with a small marketing budget. That start-up sold for over $300 million in less than a year. We didn't make $300 million through conventional marketing--we did it because we got buzz and we followed a path of buzz marketing.

There's an old Norwegian saying, "The hungry wolf hunts best." We were hungry. We had to succeed in our start-up, because the livelihoods of 30, 40, 50, and later 60 employees were at stake. Buzz marketing is for hungry brands. Buzz marketing is for #2, #3, and #4 brands. Buzz marketing is not for fat, happy, #1 brands who are marketing to play it safe...not screw up...and not get fired.

Working for a big brand...the pressures simply aren't the same. Certainly, you worry in a big company, but the worry isn't the same. There's always a marketing budget next year. In a start-up, there might not be a next year.

In a start-up, fear is built into your DNA. For months I would go to sleep scared and wake up scared. The only way we could grow profitably was with buzz marketing.

Because word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of marketing on earth, our marketing had to start conversations. Firms like Euro RSCG have documented the impact of word-of-mouth...it's 10X more powerful than TV or print advertising. Buzz marketing works. Buzz marketing works 10 x more than conventional marketing.

Now...ask some top companies in America about their word-of-mouth or buzz marketing plan, and you'll get a lot of blank stares. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful form of marketing on earth, yet many have no earthly idea how to trigger it. It's triggered with buzz marketing.

Great marketing...does not come from Procter & Gamble. Great marketing is buzz marketing: it gets people talking and the media writing about your brand.

These are examples of great marketing (e.g. buzz marketing):

Apple Computer launched two computers with very similar looking advertising campaigns. One ad campaign failed miserably. One changed the history of Apple, captured buzz, and propelled Apple's break-away growth.

Miller Lite defied all odds and the steepest probability of failure by creating buzz. It later became the second best selling beer in America. Ford Mustang should have been outsold by the Chevy Camaro, which had more resources and what many consider a better product. But Mustang got buzz, defied the odds, and outsold Camaro by a wide margin.

George Lois, the man who put the Tommy Hilfiger brand on the map was a buzz marketing guru before his time. He said he could make a $1 million of marketing look like $10 million...because people talked about his form of buzz marketing. He got buzz.

During the dot-com bubble, hundreds of brands followed a conventional approach to brand-building...entrusting their budgets to the traditional marketing establishment. It turned out to be the biggest waste of advertising money in history.

I, too, was part of that dot-com era, but I didn't follow the herd. I literally put our start-up (Half.com) on the map by convincing a small town in Oregon to change its name from Halfway to Half.com, Oregon. It cost $100,000 and delivered $4 million in publicity. A forty-fold return on investment. And yet when I told traditional marketers of this idea before it happened...they sneered. After it happened, I was suddenly brilliant. Buzz marketing always seems brilliant in hind-sight, but irrational beforehand. It's all a question of risk and vision. Do you have an appetite for risk with buzz marketing? Do you have buzz marketing vision? Reward is there for those who will follow a path of buzz marketing.

Despite the odds of any dot-com, Half.com was one of the few that succeeded. It catapulted into the top 10 list of retail sites in less than six months and consistently ranked as one of the top five most transacted web sites on the Internet. We sold the company to eBay for over $300 million. We didn't follow the herd of conventional marketing, we followed a path of buzz marketing.

But how do you create buzz? How do you become a buzz marketing brand? Whether you're General Motors or General Plumbing, the secrets of buzz marketing are the same.

The first section of the book Got Buzz will take you on a journey of one of the most amazing stories of buzz marketing: convincing a small town in Halfway, Oregon to change its name to Half.com, Oregon. The second section of the book tells the inside stories of iconic brands that broke away from the pack and defied the odds--by creating buzz and practicing the maxims of buzz marketing. The third section of the book reveals the six secrets of buzz marketing, so you can multiply the power of your marketing dollars by a factor of 3-10X.

Again and again, people ask me, "How do you come up with this stuff?" How do you transform yourself into a buzz marketing brand? Well the answer doesn't lie in the coursework at Columbia Business School, or any other traditional marketing principles. It's actually quite simple.

To defy the odds...all you need is buzz. Brands that succeed, get buzz. And buzz marketing works. Steve Forbes, Ben Cohen (former co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and President of TrueMajority.org), the former editor of the Wall Street Journal, and the former Chief Marketing Officer of Pepsi, have all endorsed the book Got Buzz for a reason. It works.

Traditional thinkers, don't bother reading the book "Buzzmarketing." Adventurers, come with me on an adventure to get buzz for you. Click here.