The Anatomy of Buzz

The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, a new book from Emanuel Rosen, is all about word-of-mouth marketing, and NOLS has made an appearance into the first chapter.

Rosen’s book opens on the first page to an October morning in Salem, Oregon. Amy Rathke, a student at Willamette University then, and an instructor and employee for NOLS now, is talking up NOLS to her classmates. She creates so much “buzz” in fact, that when our vegetable oil powered bus stops by the school, everyone that visits the bus that day mentions Amy’s name when asked how they heard about NOLS. The book then explains the impact the bus had on everyone who saw the bus as it rolled throughout the U.S.

An Excerpt from The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited:
“A man named Randy whom I met on the bus one day in upstate New York told me that back in 1984 he took some time off from college to do a spring semester in the Rockies with NOLS. He had fond memories of the school. Now, twenty-three years later, he brought his daughter along to meet the NOLS folks. She’s looking into taking a course too. Remarkably, Randy had been researching the possibility of getting a veggie-powered vehicle for a year, and when he heard that NOLS had one, he felt yet another connection to the school and its goals.”