I am honored to have received an invitation from BzzAgent’s Founder/CEO Dave Balter to review the private beta for the new product they are launching, called BzzScapes. I was invited with eleven other people, and am truly excited by this site, so wanted to talk a bit about it.
First… what is BzzAgent? It’s a word of mouth marketing company. The way it works, is that people sign up to be an “agent” for a particular brand’s campaign, they receive materials in the mail, and then report on their experiences. For example, a few months back, I was an agent for the Boston Market campaign 
(completely unrelated to my Twitter name of @BostonMarketer!). I received a package in the mail that educated me about Boston Market and gave me coupons to use. I was supposed to use the coupons and buy the product, and then report my experiences with the brand and with telling other people about the brand. This model is incredibly successful at spreading the word about products and services.
About BzzScapes
But, being immersed in the online world, I had been surprised that BzzAgent didn’t have more of an online presence or plan for using online for word of mouth. BzzScapes is their first answer to that question, with online communities that allow consumers to create, add to and interact with the brand “Scape”. Consumers create a central place for content they find about brands they are interested in. They can upload their favorite photos, videos, experiences, websites, etc. Anyone can create a Scape for a brand, anyone can add content to a Scape, and anyone can rate/review the content. Community members can “follow” brands so they are updated when new content is added, and also follow and communicate with other community members. The site has only been in beta testing until its launch this morning, but there are currently three thousand community members, 300 Scapes and 4,000 pieces of content already on the site.
All of this is free to the consumers and free to the brands, as it is all user uploaded content. However, if a brand chooses to, they can pay BzzAgent $5,000/month to “activate” their brand, which gives them additional services. For activated brands, BzzAgent will upload the brand’s content into the BzzScape (only consumers can rate content though). The brand will also be promoted in certain areas throughout the site and in BzzAgent emails. And, most importantly, the brand gets access to consumers, so can poll them, ask them questions and test out new ideas. A brand can also pay BzzAgent to find new users for its Scape.
I LOVE the idea of BzzScapes, and think it is interesting from both the consumer and brand perspectives.
Consumer perspective
For consumers, this platform is interesting, as it allows people to connect with a brand and shape the way the Scape looks, without a corporate influence. Consumers have the opportunity to become an opinion leader in the eyes of the brand and other consumers. And, they can connect with others who have a passion for the brand.
Brand perspective
For brands, this is like free marketing research. They can see what consumers are uploading and how they are rating these items, which can provide valuable information about where people are focusing their attention. Its giving the brand a window into the minds of people who want to engage with the brand. It can also help enhance a consumer’s loyalty and passion for the brand, by seeing more content about it. With the “activation” option, having the ability to find your top supporters and detractors is something that often times can be difficult to do. In addition, since each item is categorized into “type” (good, bad, why you buy, etc.), brands can track changes in the sentiment about the brand over time.
Another benefit to the brand is that bringing all this content together in one place will certainly have an impact in search engine rankings.
Landscape view of the Lego brand
My overall thoughts
I think this is an incredibly exciting and innovative way to build an online community, with content as opposed to conversation. As a marketer, the benefits of being able to use the information in the BzzScape is a great addition to other research and data. And, being able to reach out to supporters/detractors is invaluable. Like any research, however, it needs to be looked at in a context of other data, and analyzed for it’s inherent potential biases. For example, I would imagine that people who participate in a Scape will more likely than not be passionate fans, and secondly passionate detractors, but not much in the middle.
I also see the Scapes as encouraging loyalty solely by people participating in the Scape. By talking to others, seeing more content, they may become even more loyal.
A primary way I see these Scapes 
becoming viral is for people to use the Share feature in BzzScapes, where you can click a button to share content on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc. The sharing option is there, but could be beefed up on the site a bit more, by suggesting sharing when a person is engaged with rating or commenting.
One concern I had is surrounding transparency, which is something important for success in social media. I was concerned that consumers would think that the brand owners rated their content highly in order to make their BzzScape look more favorable. But, Dave educated me that brands that are “activated” are not able to rate their own content (they can just add content). I think this is something that needs to be communicated, to educate consumers that the Scapes are consumer generated and driven.
In order to start a new Scape and have it visible to others, a consumer needs to upload five pieces of content, which seems to be a high barrier to participation. I’m not sure why there needs to be a limit, but if there is, I believe that three would be more reasonable.
What do you think of this new product? How do you see it being used? Would you participate as a consumer or as a brand owner?
