WOMMA/Summit - Day 1: State of the Industry
The Summit is off to a great start and the energy is high! Peter Waldheim, Interim CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is giving the Third Annual State of the Industry.
Conference blogger Jake McKee will primarily cover the keynote sessions, and where appropriate, I'll add some color.
Memorable quotes and observations by Waldheim:
* "We're here in the creation of a new marketing movement."
* "The fact that there are many marketers who are skeptical is classical... and they're going through their Five Stages of Grief."
* Waldheim noted that at one point, marketers looked at social media and word of mouth marketing with glee, erroneously believing that they could simply drop their existing advertising into these new approaches.
* "Where there's smoke, there's fire" and traditional advertisers are spending more time on word-of-mouth.
* In just 3 years, WOMMA created an entire industry.
* WOMMA is #1 on Google not due to Google-bombing, but because people are finding value in what's being offered.