Welcome to the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit 2007

Introduction & Welcome: Get Up to Speed on the State of WOM Research

• Dr. Walter J. Carl, Chief Research Officer, ChatThreads
• Howard Kaushansky, President, Umbria

Word of mouth marketing research has come a long way. Find out all of the dynamic changes that have been happening -- and what it means for you and your company.

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The Net Promoter Score Discussion

• Moderator: Dr. Walter J. Carl, Chief Research Officer, ChatThreads
• Matt McGlinn, Sr. Director, Analytics, BzzAgent
• Suhail Khan, Director of Worldwide Customer Loyalty Programs, IBM Enterprise Content Management
• Deb Eastman, Satmetrix
• Tim Keiningham, IPSOS

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Measuring the Ripple: Creating the G2X Relay Rate and an Industry Standard Methodology to Measure the Spread of WOM Conversations and Marketing

• Matt McGlinn, Sr. Director, Analytics, BzzAgent
• Dr. Walter J. Carl, Chief Research Officer, ChatThreads

From circulation numbers to click-through rates, every advertising medium has developed “industry standard” measurements. As the newest form of media, standards in the WOM industry are just now emerging. One of the most important -- and until now elusive -- metrics is "pass along" rates, or the generational reach of a WOM campaign. This session will explore how far word of mouth spreads in a single WOM media program.

Learn:

• How the generational relay rate methodology was created to reliably measure WOM audience size and outcomes
• The benefits of standardizing the relay rate metric and its underlying methodology
• A practical application of the measurement in a business case
• The future of third-party, generational WOM measurement

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Influencer Product Seeding Programme

• Lauren Ackerman, Account Executive, Matchstick

It is often assumed that high involvement categories such as technology and automotive are the subject of all word of mouth conversations taking place. But what about the consumer packaged goods category? Do people genuinely have conversations about a product that costs $2.99? Are word of mouth conversations different for a CPG product versus a product from the automotive, technology, or beverage alcohol category?

Matchstick will dispel the myths about low-involvement products and word of mouth, using an example of a recent program they executed for a new adidas personal care product. Come and learn how and why word of mouth works for CPG products in an Influencer seeding campaign.

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How Word of Mouth Impacts Medicare Product Launch and Product Design

• Paolo Gaudiano, Chief Technology Officer, Icosystem

Icosystem developed a software simulation platform for marketing strategy and planning. The platform enables marketers to understand how WOM, social networks, and other types of consumer interactions all influence the outcome of any marketing initiative across traditional and non-traditional channels.

In 2005 Icosystem began working with Humana’s Senior Products group to help them plan their marketing strategy for new product launches that were planned for 2006, when Medicare plans were mandated by law to begin including prescription drug coverage. Their tool helped Humana make a number of important predictions, and it elucidated key aspects of how WOM would impact the outcome of their marketing initiatives.

One year after the launch of the new Medicare plans, Humana had moved from sixth-largest to second-largest provider of Medicare plans in the United States -- find out how Icosystems used WOM to make it happen!

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Boosting Natural Search Traffic Using Ratings and Reviews

• Jeff Watts, Product Manager, Bazaarvoice

Online customer ratings and reviews are a great platform for your company's biggest fans to talk about what they like (or what they'd like to change) about what you do. A huge number of consumers do online research before making a product purchase, and this is a great place for them to start -- in a forum that leads directly to the point of purchase. But that's not the only benefit of customer ratings and reviews; they can also boost your search engine rankings. In this session, you'll learn:

• The benefits of using online customer ratings and reviews on your website
• How this word of mouth vehicle can naturally elevate your search engine rankings
• The numbers that prove the benefits of giving customers a platform talk to each other via ratings and reviews

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From Media Engagement to Media Synergy: The Theory and the Metrics for WOM

• Dr. Joe Pilotta, Vice President of Research, BIGresearch

This presentation from BIGresearch will set out to eradicate the current quasi-socio/psychological engagement model in advertising and marketing. This model, according to BIGresearch, is conceptually inadequate, and that's why they are eager to replace it with a communication model of engagement and synergy.

The application to BIGresearch SIMM data provides powerful, new-order communication analysis and strategy as applied to media planning and ROI analysis.

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Is There No Such Thing as Bad News? How Controversy Drives WOM around Super Bowl Advertising and How it Can Bite the Brand

• Brian Cavoli, Director of Marketing, TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony

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Lunch: WOM Research Roundtable Discussion

• Moderator: Ed Keller, CEO, Keller Fay Group

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Social Media: A Futuristic Look at the Word of Mouth Landscape

• Idil Cakim, VP of Interactive Media, GolinHarris

Consumer trust is a valuable commodity, especially as trust for a wide range of marketing avenues wanes. So what forms of communication channels do consumers trust the most and which communication channels will be most trustworthy in the future? Get the answers to those questions, with the help of GolinHarris's Trusted Media Index, and find out:

• How different audience segments' trust in media varies depending on their interest areas and demographic backgrounds.
• Most trusted information sources today
• Most trusted channels in the future
• Proposition to measure share of conversation and channel efficacy in generating WOM

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Understanding the Value of Customer Advocacy Communities

• Tom Kehler, VP, Informative Products, Satmetrix Systems

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Driving Word of Mouth Advocacy Among Business Executives: The Experiential Marketing Connection

• Laura Shuler, Chief Strategy Officer, President, US, Jack Morton Worldwide

Word of mouth recommendation is an especially critical factor for business decision-makers, but there is comparatively little information on how to inspire and track BtoB WOM.

In this presentation, Jack Morton Worldwide's Chief Strategy Officer and President, US, Laura Shuler, gives an overview of key insights from recent research commissioned by Jack Morton and conducted by The Keller Fay Group. The research offers the first 360-degree perspective on executive word of mouth: its influence, its scope, and the behaviors associated with executive "super influencers," who recommend products and services to their colleagues and friends.

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Using WOM to Enhance Corporate Sponsored Charitable Giving

• Edward Weiss, Academic Advisor and Practitioner Faculty, Johns Hopkins University

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The Origin and Impact of CPG New Product Buzz: Emerging Trends and Implications

• Jessica Hogue, Senior Analyst, Nielsen BuzzMetrics

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The Effects of Word of Mouth: An Agent-Based Simulation of Interpersonal Influence in Social Networks

• Dejan Duzevik, Complexity Scientist, Icosystem

Learn whether or not the spread of information and change of opinions in a social network depend on the existence of Influentials -- individuals with disproportionate influence on others in the group.

Icosystem approached this question by creating a computer simulation of a social network and tested hundreds of "what-if" scenarios about the structure of the network and the nature of the individuals in it. In their presentation, Icosystem will discuss results that uncovered the conditions under which Influentials account for a large portion of word of mouth effects -- but also the conditions under which word of mouth dynamics are spawned by the underlying social structure and not by specific characteristics of some individuals.

This presentation will include a live demonstration of Icosystem's computer simulation and a visualization of the spread of information.

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Leading the Conversation: Influencers Impact on Word of Mouth and the Brand Conversation

• Brad Fay, Chief Operating Officer, Keller Fay Group

• How important are influencers to a word of mouth strategy?
• Who are they, and how do they do their job?
• What is the role of category-specific influencers?

Find the answers to these questions and more. This presentation is based upon a paper in which the Keller Fay Group examines the influencer-implications of research they conducted. The research is the result of nearly 30,000 interviews with representative consumers concerning the approximately 300,000 brand conversations that they were engaged in the day prior to interview. The findings provide practical insights about how to leverage influencers in your word of mouth marketing campaigns.

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Identifying Influencers in the Digital Age: The "Uploader"

• Cory Pierce, Strategy Director, Agency.com

Sixty years of influencer theory has identified three established types of influencers: opinion leaders, market mavens, and social hubs. Little has been done, however, to test whether these profiles continue to hold in the emerging online context. In the digital age, communications technologies have expanded all people’s influencing capabilities: It is now easier for all customers to spread their opinions faster and with wider reach, produce and acquire information, and build social networks. But only a small percentage of the online population is regularly using these technologies to do this.

• Learn what Agency.com's uploaders study discovered about the influential potential of the 8-16% of the U.K. online population who regularly upload both media content (audio, video, image and text) and post reviews.
• Find out which elements beyond the standard scales capture other elements key to understanding influence in the digital age.

This presentation argues the case for a new type of digital influencer profile by demonstrating how uploaders not only combine elements of the three profiles into one, but as prime architects of the information landscape and as social leaders of communities they expand the very concept of influence.

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The Communication of Influence: It's Broken Too

• Dr. Joe Pilotta, Vice President of Research, BIGresearch

This presentation is sure to stir up the influencer debate. In their presentation, BIGresearch will make an argument against the current influencer model, which it contends is broken.

So what's wrong with the influencer model as it stands? According to BIGresearch:

• The current influencer model is a push/distribution model
• It isn't able to address the complexity of face-to-face level of influence
• It is not able to address influence even when mediated by technology (email, hypertext, mobile telephony, etc.)

BIGresearch will present an alternative influencer model, and its application will be provided based on the structural characteristics of word of mouth.

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Influence: Exploring Perspective in Private Customer Communities

• Julie Wittes Schlack, Senior Vice President, Innovation and Design, Communispace Corporation

Companies seeking to create or leverage word of mouth influence among consumers may not be best-served by viral marketing stunts or reliance on bloggers who are deemed to be influential. Rather, they will likely benefit more by creating their own relationships with consumers, and by visibly and selflessly fostering consumers’ relationships with one another.

These are the implications of a study that explores the act of personal influence through data retrieved from 10 private customer communities, facilitated by Communispace Corporation. It draws not only on self-reported methods of data gathering, but on the perspectives of the persons being influenced, as well.

Research findings don’t negate the traditional profile of an "Influential," but they do suggest that one need not fit that profile to have an influence on others. Whether members are influenced by passion, goodness, or their personal knowledge of someone else’s expertise, relationship is the dominant factor in consumer-to-consumer influence.

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Influencing the Influencer: How Online Advertising and Media Impact WOM

• Heath Row, Research Manager, DoubleClick

Consumers say word of mouth is a key factor that influences them around most product categories, according to Touchpoints -- DoubleClick's annual survey of consumers . But how can marketers efficiently spend marketing dollars to influence word of mouth? Last year, DoubleClick identified more than 1,000 influencers among the 6,000-plus Touchpoints respondents, and these influencers report that websites in general -- and web advertising in particular -- are key sources of influence for them.

• Find out what these findings say about where you should spend your marketing dollars
• Hear what consumers are saying works -- and what doesn't
• Learn how online destinations generate WOM conversations and influence purchase decisions

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The Differing Dynamics of Influence across Product Categories

• David Howlett, Vice President of Consumer Insights and Strategy, Umbria

• Learn which influences consumers pay most attention to when making shopping decisions
• Hear how they vary by product type and category
• Find how which influences consumers rely on the most

These three key points were addressed in a recent survey fielded by Umbria and NPD Group. Learn more from this analysis of influence across 19 product categories, as well as how channels of influence fluctuate based on variables such as age and gender and other factors. Surprising results will help you better understand the role of various channels of influence in impacting purchase decisions.

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What's the Value of the Conversation: WOM Research 2007 & Wrap-Up Discussion

After a day of getting down and dirty with the data and numbers around word of mouth marketing, this is a chance for attendees to come together and discuss what it all means.

• How far has WOM research come in the last year?
• What are the newest WOM research "a-ha" moments?
• Where do we see this industry going in the next 12 months?

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