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Stowe Boyd wrote a piece a few days back about BzzAgent’s 90-Day corporate blogging experiment and how the firm missed an opportunity to do something unique and meaningful. The blogger covering the firm was John Butman, co-author of BzzAgent’s book Grapvine.

I found a few strategic mentions of interest:

Buzz Brainstorming

…an average Bzz campaign costs around $200K, small in comparison to a television-print-radio campaign…

Notable: It appears as if BzzAgent has increased average published rates from approximatley $90,000 per campaing to $200,000.

Free Stuff

Seems that there are pallets and pallets of goods stored in the warehouse in Haverhill. Supplied by clients as BzzAgent rewards, but unclaimed. “I think the agents are saving up their points for the really big stuff,” says Brady.

Round about 4:45 Aaron distributes a black BzzAgent laptop bag to everyone. Inside is a printed list of the stuff you’re entitled to. Oh my.

The library table is overflowing with boxes and bags and oodles of merch. Silver 23-ounce cocktail shakers. Very fluffy white hotel towels. Saturday by Ian McEwan. Sonicare toothbrushes and weird little Italian toothbrush covers. Wicker picnic baskets. Beauty kits and a stack of Ernest the Balancing Bears. And the big win: $25 iTunes Music Cards. (I scored one for my son.)

Here’s a few things that caught my interest:
BzzAgent is driving up client costs for iTunes by not returning the “unclaimed” music cards. That’s just poor campaign management and, a lack of respect for the bottomline.
I believe, more than even, that “agents” are strickly driven by economic incentives.
I love fluffy white towels.

Mysterious Stranger

“He’s serving a subpeona,” somebody said.

Notable: Interesting. But not that interesting.

New Bosses

A 90-day contract account director, John Ramsey. (Oh, the tyranny of the need for quarterly results!)

Note: Culture and operations changes can put a huge amount of pressure on an organization that is trying to grow quickly. It’s likely new process documents will be generated or re-revised in the coming weeks. And, add a little VC inspired quarterly performance pressure to make it even more exciting.

TAGS: Stowe+Boyd, bzzagent, joe+chernov, john+butman, word+of+mouth+marketing, womma