Jupiter: Big Companies Lag in WOM, behind Small Companies
Great new report out today from (my alma mater) Jupiter Research on Word of Mouth practices. Brand new Ad Analyst Emily Riley found that large companies generally lag behind small companies when it comes to WOM, both in terms of doing it and measuring it.
I believe this is a result of specialization within big companies (otherwise known as silos). In small companies, often the people who work on the product are the exact same ones who market and sell it. Everyone is closely connected to the thing-being-sold. In larger companies, that structure becomes nearly impossible, and you begin to get specialists: someone does manufacturing, someone does sourcing and someone does marketing.
The result is that a) few people have a complete image in their heads of what the company does and b) groups actually responsible for connecting with customers are in departments distinct from the rest of the company.
The biggest take-away I get from the Jupiter report is that WOM is a cultural issue, more than anything else. If a company of any size can find a way to connect everyone not only to the thing-being-sold, but also to the people buying it, they will begin to win at WOM. Things like blogs begin to make a lot more sense if there is this Culture of Connection.
