August 8th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
For my 7th installment of the Word-of-Mouth Wisdom interview series, I am proud to interview Ed Keller. Ed serves on our Board of Directors and is an industry guru as well as a seasoned operational CEO. He has continuously added value to the Bazaarvoice team and Board, and we are constantly learning from him. He is also the founder and CEO of The Keller Fay Group, which is doing some of the most interesting work in the word of mouth field.
1. As the author of "The Influentials", former CEO of Roper, President of WOMMA, Board Director at Bazaarvoice, and CEO of your new business, why do you think the word of mouth movement is buzzing like never before?
Why now and not five years ago?
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July 3rd, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half..”
-John Wanamaker, advertising pioneer and famous merchant
We had the pleasure of hosting Andy Sernovitz, the founder of WOMMA and a Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member, at our office a few weeks ago. Andy gave a lunch presentation to our team, and something he said really struck me: “Advertising is the tax companies pay to sell poor products”. Google, Starbucks, and many other brave companies decided to buck the formula and invest in the product instead of “brand imagery” (i.e., advertising). Andy has countless examples, and wrote a fantastic book on the subject that has been endorsed by the likes of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki, two of my favorite authors.
And then I met with a large apparel company a week later that is afraid of reviews. Prospect: “We tell the consumer how they should think about our products”. Prospect: “A hip woman in NYC may be turned off by a woman in Topeka, Kansas writing a review on a trendy fashion”. I’ll save you my lengthy and impassioned response.
As I write this, I’m on my flight back from London after spending a week in our UK office, speaking at the e-consultancy conference and meeting with prospects, partners, and press. And tomorrow is the 4th, so I’m feeling kind of revolutionary. So, here is my take on how advertising will evolve.
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July 1st, 2007 by Michael Osborne Chief Revenue Officer
As the Bazaarvoice gadget guy it was a moral imperative that I got an iPhone on Friday – so we could ALL share in its wonder. When I left the office at 3:30 on Friday I thought FOR SURE I’d be too late. I was wrong. When I waited in line and I was #200 or so I thought FOR SURE they’d come out and tell us they only had 100 units in stock. I was wrong. When the line finally started moving I figured they’d only have a few counters going and it would take forever, or they’d only let you get one, or they’d only have the 4gb iPhones, not the 8gb. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Apple did it right, exactly right, from the hype to the experience of getting one to the device itself. And their buzz couldn’t be hotter right now.
Steve Jobs set the blogs ablaze in January by announcing the iPhone and continued causing a word of mouth stir all the way through the interview with the Wall Street Journal. Looking back to my post in January, from day one the iPhone was a hit. The expectations were overwhelming and the dissenters numerous, but Apple adhered to one key rule in marketing – live up to the hype. Apple called their shot and told consumers EXACTLY what to expect, with demos and details metered out carefully, then simply released exactly that. Creating the buzz is easy, but nailing it on launch day is where some products have missed the mark. Not the iPhone.
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January 15th, 2007 by Michael Osborne Chief Revenue Officer
Since this is my first post to the Bazaarblog I thought I might introduce myself – I’m Michael Osborne, Vice President of Sales at Bazaarvoice. I’ve been here for 6 months now and finally had a break between our great meetings with prospects to write up a quick post on something I’m very passionate about – technology. Consumer electronics and technology in general has been a passion of mine since I was much younger and exposed to the original Apple Macintosh 128k. And a recent announcement reminded me of just how long it has been since 1984.
This past week saw the public announcement of what will be THE device of the year in consumer electronics – the Apple iPhone. Regardless of your views on Apple, the Mac, or the now legally-embroiled Cisco iPhone issue, you will admit that this thing is cool. The blogs that cover this space exploded on Tuesday with the announcement at Macworld by Steve Jobs. The blogs that DON’T cover this space exploded just the same. It seemed that everyone was talking about this 4.5” x 2.4” x 0.46” phone – that doesn’t really exist yet. I found it interesting that no matter how hard people tried, you couldn’t really talk about it for the past 2.5 years – including Apple employees that were working on it.
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Mary Meeker writes one of my favorite trends report each year, Morgan Stanley's Technology Trends. This makes for great weekend reading. It gives you both a US and global perspective on the trends most affecting the technology industry broadly, primarily from a B2C perspective. It has already been forwarded to me by many of the most connected people I know in technology, such as Josh Kopelman (one of our investors), showing its broad impact. 
