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Jim Nail -- Cymphony -- 'What's in Your Cereal Bowl? Measuring the Landscape of WOM Participants in Consumer-Generated Media'
Jim Nail opened by explaining that Cymphony chose to explore the online buzz around breakfast cereal to demonstrate that WOM conversations happen about even the most innocuous of consumer products (because what's less provoking than oatmeal?). If breakfast cereal can generate measurable WOM, anything can.
Cymphony compared their online "share of voice" measurements directly to the market shares of the top ten cereals -- and was somewhat surprised when the top ten most buzzed about cereals were not necessarily the same as the top ten most purchased. This finding prompted Cymfony to dig a little deeper into their data to discover why certain cereals with relatively little market share were able to generate so much online buzz.
Why certain cereals get more PC time:
* Cereals that fall into "health" discussions are talked about very frequently because health is a topic that gets people talking.
* Parents tend to do a proportionately large amount of online conversational research into which breakfast cereals they should be feeding their children. It's not that parents are particularly enthusiastic about cereal; they are, however, very enthusiastic about their children.
* And (Jim's favorite) there are certain conversations that revolve around nostalgia and extreme brand loyalty, which accounts for some cereals having a very high share of voice without a correspondingly high market share.
Finding out these more niche online buzz influencers and their motivational profiles points to new opportunities to grow the market share, according to Cymfony. Advocates are out there for every product category, the key is to find them, capitalize on their established advocacy, and grow that niche.