Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About

Product Author Bios

Bertrand Cesvet is chairman and chief strategist of SID LEE, a Commercial Creativity company with offices in Montreal and Amsterdam. He provides creative and strategic leadership on marketing communications and experience design projects for clients such as adidas, Red Bull, Cirque du Soleil, and MGM Mirage. He lives in Montreal with his wife Josee and daughters Gabrielle and Emma.

Tony Babinski is a Montreal-based writer, creative director, and filmmaker. He has worked with SID LEE since 2000 and is the author of Cirque du Soleil :20 Years Under the Sun, the authorized history of Cirque du Soleil. He lives in Montreal with his wife Julie and children Sophie, Max, and Lily.

Eric Alper is a strategist for SID LEE. He has kept a blog about Conversational Capital going since 2006. He has also developed and written the Conversational Capital blog.

“In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell presents an important idea without any ‘how to.’ Now Bertrand Cesvet provides the ‘how to’ you need to create ‘Tipping Points’ for your business and success. This book is a compelling presentation of a powerful idea. This is how the new world will do business. Highly recommended if you care about your future.”

Stewart Emery, coauthor of international best-seller Success Built to Last

“Ultimately, magic is unexplainable. Still, Conversational Capital provides the most insightful analysis of what makes our shows ring in the heart of fans.”

Guy Laliberte, founder, Cirque du Soleil

“Like all great ideas, Conversational Capital is at its core simple: word-of-mouth momentum can be created, harnessed, and used to build consumer passion for a brand better and more cost-effectively than almost any other marketing medium.”

Rupert Duchesne,CEO of Aeroplan

“Marketing is an art that Conversational Capital turns smartly into science. This book provides the complete prescription for getting consumers excited about your ideas.”

Jim Champy, coauthor, Reenginering the Corporation, and author, Outsmart!

Embed into Your Products and Experiences the Ingredients that Drive Advocacy:

• Create products and services that consumers find truly significant
• Intensify consumption experiences to transform your brands into market leaders
• Don’t settle for serendipity: manage and control the word-of-mouth around your brand by manipulating eight powerful experience amplifiers

For all the books that speak of the value of consumer advocacy, few indicate how to create it to begin with. Armed with a compelling set of examples from their own work in fostering leading brands, the authors reveal the triggers of word-of-mouth and a process to embedding them in your own products, helping you create stuff people love to talk about. From Bertrand Cesvet, chairman of Sid Lee, a leading purveyor of experiential design and communications services that leverages commercial creativity for breakthrough brands including Cirque du Soleil, adidas, and Red Bull.

1% of the proceeds from the royalties earned by the authors will be donated to the One Drop Foundation. The mission of the One Drop^TM Foundation is to fight poverty around the world by giving everyone access to safe water.

Table of Contents

About the Authors  x

PART 1: Defining Conversational Capital

1          What Is Conversational Capital?  3

2          The Eight Engines of Conversational Capital  9

3          How Conversational Capital Works  15

4          Why Conversational Capital Works  35

5          Conversational Capital Is Not Buzz  45

6          Conversational Capital and Advocacy  53

7          Conversational Capital Is for Everyone  55

PART 2: The Engines of Conversational Capital

8          Rituals  63

9          Initiation  69

10        Exclusive Product Offering (EPO)  77

11        Over-Delivery  85

12        Myths  91

13        Relevant Sensory Oddity (RSO)  99

14        Icons  107

15        Tribalism  115

16        Endorsement  123

17        Continuity  127

PART 3: Implementing Conversational Capital

18        Getting Started  135

19        Designing a Solution  143

20        Implementation  153

21        And Two More Questions  161

Glossary of Terms  165

Index  171