How-To: Conducting Ethical WOM Campaigns
5 Tips from WOMMA's Andy Sernovitz
"Our medium is consumer trust," says Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. "People don't recommend products or companies they don't believe in. If you burn consumer trust, the whole thing goes away. Being ethical in WOM campaigns is of primary importance. And it's the right thing to do."
Here are Andy's five tips on conducting ethical WOM campaigns. The first three tips are called the Honesty ROI and form the basis of the WOMMA Code of Ethics.
Tip #1. Honesty of relationship
Never lie about your relationship with the consumer advocate, and never ask a consumer to lie for you. If an advocate is getting free samples or receives any type of reimbursement, tell people. Turn disclosure into a positive: being a beta-tester conveys insider status, being part of a fan club gives the relationship an aspect of fun.
Disclosure, when done well, gives the advocate credibility.
Tip #2. Honesty of opinion
Consumers have to give true opinions -- you can't script them or tell them what to say. That means WOM marketers are held to a higher standard: you can't get by on so-so products. But when you have fantastic products and open relationships with consumers, you'll get fantastic feedback.
Tip #3. Honesty of identity
Never lie about who you are. Stealth marketing, or hiring shills, is never okay.
Don't send "leaners" into bars to start conversations without revealing who they are. Don't go into chat rooms with 30 login names and pretend to be a consumer. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with a marketer going into a message board and writing, "Hey, I work for so-and-so and just wanted to weigh in on the topic of..."
In fact, companies that participate in communities are seen as caring about the people who are voicing their opinions.
Tip #4. Treat people like real people
Word of mouth is about conversations. If you're having genuine, two-way conversations, you're building trust and relationships. Don't fake it.
Tip #5. Never push the line
Trust, once broken, is not recoverable. Treat trust as your most valuable asset, and protect it and nurture it above all else.
"If you continue to earn respect, people will tell their friends about you. It's really that easy," Andy says.
More about Andy:
Download Andy's Ethics in Word of Mouth Marketing presentation (PDF download)
Comments
This is why we joined WOMMA, it aligns with what we know about our female consumers. We may fall in and out of love, but we don't fall in and out of trust.
Posted by Mary Hunt on 04/20/06
Andy, you have hit the nail on the head, trust is the foundation of the customer relationship.
Another article that supports this is Edelmans Me2 article: http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/archives/2006/01/the_mea_revolut.html
Trust becomes even more important as companies move away from treating customers as passive consumers, and more as co-creators of value, or at least co-conspirators which is at the heart of the consumer generated content trend.
A related article I wrote puts trust at the foundation of what I call the "hierarchy of customer experience", and co-creation at the peak
http://experiencecurve.com/articles/customerloyaltyFINAL.pdf
The concept being, if you want to harness your customers creativity they had better trust you :-)
Posted by karl on 05/ 1/06