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Dell's Swarm: enlisting friends as marketers

Posted by: Stephen Baker on May 27

One whole section I left out of my Friends story, mostly for space constraints, had to do with Word of Mouth marketing. If you figure that people don’t listen to advertisers but do pay attention to friends, it makes sense to enlist them as marketers.

The trouble is that friends have reputations, and they don’t want to squander them by spamming their contact lists. So the challenge for companies is to find true fans of a product, and then give them the means to share their passion with their contacts.

Dell is trying to tap this dynamic in Singapore with its Swarm marketing. Those who start a “swarm” of buyers get a discount—and the discount grows as they add their friends to the group.

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Reader Comments

Phil M.

May 27, 2009 06:41 PM

Sounds gimmicky. What happens when "swarm" participants find out they could have gotten the same or a lower price on their own?

Unless the volume drives cost down below readily available sale prices, these swarms are a stunt.

Why not just create an organized affinity/group buying program?

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In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

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