Gauging The Buzz

I was once visiting a possible supplier. Their rep was keen on regaling me with wonders about their latest new product. Of which the whole firm were apparently “totally excited”. Whilst waiting alone for a moment out front, I gently enquired of the receptionist. I asked what this new marvel was all about. “Oh, I don’t know anything about that…”

I was reminded of this recently hearing an unnecessarily game-show-host journalist recount ‘prep’ when flying in to cover a boxing match in New York.

Over the decades, he’d developed a trick to unearth the extent to which the supposedly ‘big fight’ he was in town to cover had actually (as we’d say nowadays) cut-through with the normal public.

He simply asked three types of person if they’d heard of the upcoming bout in NYC; flight attendant, customs official, cab driver.

He felt that this allowed the real-life buzz around the event to be gauged.

Remarkably similar to my request with the above receptionist.

Surely there are similar fertile lands for us within our prospects beyond the confines of our existing contacts?

They needn’t be from any place lofty. I like the angle of this sports reporter in that they deliberately seek opinion from ‘everyday’, coal-face even, levels.

From whom could we seek such gauge?

What buzzometer reading might benefit our ambitions? A new initiative? A revenue or cost stream? An ongoing project?