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Special thanks to:
Dave Evans, HearThis.com, for producing our amazing podcast, Conference Calls Unlimited for the podcast hosting call-in service, and the fanstic WOMMA members who have volunteered their time and energy to make this all happen.

Editors:
Dana Vanden Heuvel, Jennifer Nastu, and the WOMMA staff.

Home > WOMBAT Interviews

WOMBAT Interviews Archive

WOMBAT 2 Videos are Up

Whew! We've posted all the video interviews we shot at WOMBAT2, here's how you can see them:

On the coBRANDiT site: cobrandit.com
Through iTunes: here
This WOMMA YouTube page: here

And then there's this:

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Happy Viewing, and thanks to WOMMA & all who participated! -Owen

Posted on 06/25/06 | 0 Comments | Link

Remember 'The Guy with the Striped Shirt?'

Sure you do. He's Gary Spangler, from DuPont. He spoke yesterday, beginning by pointing out the fact that he was wearing a shirt with stripes (horizontal, not vertical). He was an interesting example of branding: he did a simple thing - wore an unusual shirt and pointed it out - and made himself instantly recognizable.

Last night at the Chinese dinner feast, I wanted to say hello to Gary and talk to him more about his presentation, and thanks to his striped shirt I knew just where he was in the room. (Wouldn't it be nice if people could say that about your brand or your client's brand?). I had the luck of sitting with Gary at dinner, and heard more about his branding idea:

Gary began the whole striped shirt thing internally at DuPont. His colleagues always know, he said, when things are not going well for Gary, because he isn't wearing a striped shirt. When one of the shirts reappear, they know all is right with Gary's world. He began to be known within the company as "the guy with the striped shirt." People talked about him; they knew who he was.

So he decided at the last WOMMA conference to extend his brand externally, and made a point of referring to his striped shirt. By the end of the conference, most people knew who he was.

It seems to be working this time, too. At least the people with whom I shared dinner last night recognized Gary from his earlier talk. Perhaps more to the point, I had conversations about Gary with several of them. We talked about Gary, we talked about his brand, we talked about his presentation...

It seemed to me to be a perfect, and perfectly simple, example of a strong brand fueling word of mouth - and of word of mouth fueling a strong brand.

Posted by Jennifer Nastu, Fast Trike

Posted on 06/21/06 | 1 Comments | Link

Attendee Interviews: Frank, meet Tupperware

At conferences, you meet the most amazing people like Nikola of Tupperware and Elisa of frank (as in 'frank discussions')

Everyone gets something different out of these conferences. Overall, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive! Some of the ideas stirring around with Nikola and Elisa:
- co-creation of content and marketing messages
- the unstoppable power of social media (so much so that entire business are now built on social media consulting)
- you companies need to tie into influencers and have real discussions
- WOM, inside and out! - bring internal, not just an external play
- collaborate on marketing - next age of marketing

Someone needs to get Elisa and 'frank' to speak at the next event. In our 'frank' discussion about WOMMA and WOMBAT, it's readily apparent that their on the right track. If you're in Minneapolis on February 28th, check out The Day of Frank and frank's seminar social media and how leverage it for your enterprise, inside and out.

According to Nikola, in Serbia McDonalds is like a palace - marble, eat off the floor, 6 months to get a job there. Who knew?

Technorati Tags: feedback, wombat06, womma+wombat

Posted on 01/20/06 | 1 Comments | Link

Attendee Interview: Conversation with Peter Kim of Forrester Research

Poor Peter, he came by to ask a question about the WiFi here (or lack thereof!) and got dragged into an impropmtu interview.

Peter is in the enviable position of working in a similar space to one of our favorite analysts, Charlene Li. Peter is coving the WOM space, a bit in blogs and social media and a bit about customer information importance in marketing.

"So, Peter, when are you going to start blogging?" ...to which he responded that he's not sure yet. I encouraged him to move forward on it. There's really nothing between Peter and a blog but content! Seriously, I think that the analyst's blog adds value to their research papers because it keeps me engaged in their work between the month or two that it takes to write a proper research report.

Technorati Tags: Interview, womma+wombat

Posted on 01/19/06 | 0 Comments | Link

Day 1: Perspective

Talking to Yvonne DiVita for a moment regarding Don Pepper's keynote and she made some interesting points regarding the speaking style of men versus women presenters.

Yvonne is an expert in marketing to women and will be speaking on that topic tomorrow. Regarding Don Peppers, she noted what an excellent speaker he was...how well the speech was delivered from a presentation skill perspective.

She said that at many conferences that perhaps women speakers are not as effective as they could be, not because of content but because of delivery. She also posed the question regarding the case studies used by Don Peppers and wondered if women were connecting with his examples. Yvonne will be writing more on these topics on her blog, Lipsticking.

Technorati Tags: womma, wombat

Posted on 01/19/06 | 0 Comments | Link

Day 1: Word of Mouth Marketing 101: Core Strategies and Tactics

Global Water Cooler
Listen first than talk says Jim Nail, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Cymphony. How do you listen? Invite consumers in to talk wiith you. You may not always know what they'll say but... who knows it could turn into a new twist on an old product. Lego has built the ultimate community. Designers and customers vote on the best design.

Question: Are listening and acting 2 different functions? Should there be 2 different firms one that listens and one that acts?
Attendee: Must be incorpoated into the day to day life that all marketers live.

When you take the passion out of the mix you must have a framework to justify spending resources; must be planned, then impemented and tracked. says Jonathan Carson, CEO, BuzzMetrics. Isn't wom something that just happens? Sure but we now have the ability to study wom; digital communications provides tracking and analysis that we never had before. Two broad defination of Word of Mouth:

Organic - just sort of happens
Amplified - results of activity by marketers

Word of mouth is the act of a consumer creating or distributing information to other consumers. Jonathan says that WOM marketing is not a set a tactcs but rather it is the out come of consumers spreading information to one another. Another buzz word: Word of mouth unit : the information unit that is passed along. The action is then passed along. In tracking the venue is noted, and then the results or the end actions or responses. Again by the consumer/s.

Take Aways
Marketing relevant information
Word of mouth marketing is an outcome not a tactic. It is not about doing a cool marketing activity but rather it's an out come that consumers are doing themselves.
Publcity is not word of mouth since it is not consumer to consumer
Word of mouth marketing can be treated like traditional media impressions however, keep in mind that is is an uncontorlled and unpromoted media channel

Steve Rubel: How does this model fit in B2B where there many be small niches.
Answer: B2B has always been tuned into Word of Mouth. Different type of strategies maybe offline user groups. Put it out there ... in boards, websites.

Posted on 01/19/06 | 0 Comments | Link