Chocolate giant Hershey's is slowly moving away from the traditional TV spot to relaunch their Take 5 candy bar. There will still be a series of 15-second commercial spots but those will just be supplements to the main initiative. That push involves enlisting 69,000 "buzz marketing evangelists" to spread the word about just how wonderfully spectacularly fantastic the collection of peanut butter, pretzels and more really is. Those TV spots, as well as a number of online ad placements, will push people to visit a microsite Hershey's has created for the campaign. Come summer, that site will also be accepting 60-second videos from consumers as to why they love the Take 5 bar so much.

It's all well and good that Hershey's is thinking outside the picture-tube enclosing box for this campaign but this whole buzz-marketing aspect just bugs me. I find it hard - almost impossible - to believe that they just stumbled upon 69,000 people who were so passionate about this particular candy bar that they just leapt at the chance to spread the word. If, as I suspect, these people are being paid to stand outside movie theaters or write blog posts about the products apropos of nothing then the company has pretty much lost whatever credibility the campaign might have had.

The whole point of buzz marketing is to engage already passionate consumers and give them the tools they need to spread the word more effectively and efficiently than the traditional advertising apparatus allows for. Hiring a group of people to approach pedestrians on their way to a train in order to hype a candy bar is NOT the way to do that.