July 2006
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Two big brands -- Coca-Cola and Sprint/Nextel -- recently gave strong endorsement to WOM as a strategy. Speaking at the ad:tech Chicago conference, both companies talked about recent WOM programs and the learning they gained from the experiences. David Dickey, Sprint online and interactive advertising manager, recommended marketers define metrics for success before starting a campaign and be prepared for both positive and negative feedback. Coke brand manager Mel Clements: "If you give people a great experience and have a great campaign, they will talk about it. Word of mouth is not a 'send to friend' button at the bottom of the page. It's about being great and doing something great."
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Entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently posted a note on his blog asking for new ideas on marketing movies. Noted blogger Om Malik responded with an interesting idea: turn WOM into a sort of currency and make it worth something. Malik's proposal centers on transforming the ticket stub into a form of social currency. Moviegoers would be encouraged to pass their ticket stub on to friends and colleagues, who would then be entitled to a discount if they went and saw the film as well. The discount would actually rise with each passing week following its release, encouraging them to pass and forward their own ticket stubs to others. As Malik noted, "These days, word-of-mouth is the single most influential factor that drives a film's success. And what I am proposing is akin to institutionalizing word-of-mouth into a capital market."
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Blogs have become one of the key mediums for word of mouth. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released new data recently that offers a snapshot of the blogosophere as of April 2006. Among the key findings:
* 8% of consumers (12 million US adults) keep a blog, up from 7% last year.
* 39% of consumers (57 million US adults) read blogs, up from 27% last year.
When asked why they blog, the number one reason given (77%) was "to express themselves creatively". Other reasons included: 76% to "document personal experiences", 59% to "stay in touch with friends and family".
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Walter Carl: Net Promoter Score Becoming an Industry Standard Metric
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Gary Stein: Forrester Turning its Attention to CGM Research
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Idil Cakim: Who Influences The Influencers
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Viral marketing has become a popular way of spreading a message quickly. The phrase "go viral" has even become part of the marketing vocabulary as a result. A recent BusinessWeek article, though, raises the question as to whether it may be a victim of its own success. Ad agencies that quickly established viral creative units in the wake of the infamous Subservient Chicken ad are reporting that it costs more to guarantee audience reach promised not more than a year ago.
BusinessWeek story
What do you think? Let us know and leave a comment below.
Tourism can mean big business, and many booster organizations pour large amounts of money into promotional campaigns to draw visitors to an area. But sometimes, just by being nice and friendly, ordinary people can do more to spread positive WOM about a community more than any campaign.
For example, a recent editorial in a local paper of the small town of Houghton, Michigan urged its readers to spread the word about the beauty of its community by being nice. After recognizing that negative WOM is easier to spread than positive, the editorialist offered a few tips to area residents:
* Carry a few extra maps in the car to give away.
* Stop for stranded motorists.
* Be aware that people are listening before talking about "that warm beer and bad pasty."
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Every fall, TV networks debut a multitude of new shows and fervently hope that word of mouth will transform one of them into a success. Instead of just wishing for it, the networks are now actively trying to create some long-term buzz. The NBC TV network has released the pilot episodes of two new shows on DVD and is making them available to the public via online video rental service Netflix. By releasing the episodes early, the network is hoping that people will start talking about them with their friends and help break through the fall season clutter.
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Here's a great story. A father from Baton Rouge, Louisiana named Jack Marucci decides to make a baseball bat for his son. A local college ballplayer hears about the bat and decides he needs one. He uses it and tells a friend. The friend uses it and then tells a pro ballplayer about it. The pro calls, asks for a bat, has some success, and then talks to another pro player. Soon enough, several of the biggest names in major league baseball are calling with orders for more bats. All this with zero advertising.
Positive word of mouth clearly helped get Marucci Bat Company achieve success. What was the key catalyst? Credibility. The college ballplayer used who used the bat was an All-American at LSU. His experiences with the bat were crucial testimonials with other ballplayers. People tend to listen to others they consider credible sources of information, so once that credibility was established, the word began to quickly spread.
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At WOMMA's WOMBAT 2 conference, Jackie Huba showed a music video from pop singer Shakira that featured clips contributed by fans. Another singer, Janet Jackson, is going a similar route using consumer-generated media. She is asking fans to design the cover of her next album "20 Years Old". Photos of the artist have been made available at the site and galleries setup so fans can share their inspirations with others. While the contest doesn't guarantee a hit album, it does something two other things that are just as important: reward the long-time fans with a personal connection from the artist and get people talking about something other than "wardrobe malfunctions".
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Walter Carl: WOM Among Youth
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Gary Stein: Familiar Strangers and WOM
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Kate Niederhoffer: pWOM and NWOM in online communities
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Hit Songs Depend on Whether Peers Like It
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Perceived Justice Impacts Negative WOM Behavior
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If you build it, the editors will come. Boston marketing firm Cercone Brown Curtis has outfitted a home in Martha's Vineyard with new products and invited influential magazine editors to come and review products in their "natural setting." Using the products on hand, stylists gave demonstrations, athletes gave bike tours and tennis clinics, and a distillery hosted a mixology class teaching editors how to make drinks. The goal of the Summer House (and its planned sequel, the Winter House) was clear: invite influential magazine editors to experience the new products instead of pitching them in a traditional PR campaign and hope they will write about them and spread the word to others.
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As more companies consider starting a blog, eMarketer has taken stock of the corporate blog landscape. According to a new report by eMarketer Senior Analyst James Belcher, 5.8% of Fortune 500 companies and 1.5% of the Fortune 200 Best Small Companies have started a blog. WOM research got a plug in the report, as Belcher said, "Companies are learning, often the hard way, that monitoring blogs is becoming an essential part of brand management."
While he cited GM and Sun as two examples of companies that have successfully started blogging, Belcher also noted that the key point that's preventing many companies from getting on board is the fact that "successful blogging requires ceding message control internally to a single, real voice, and externally to commenters whose feedback may not always be positive."
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If nobody is linking or leaving comments on your blog, conversational media consultant Amy Gahran has hit upon a novel idea: strategic commenting. "If you view your blog as part of a public conversation, rather than a mere publication, then an easy way to attract more interest and interaction becomes obvious," she says.
Here's a quick summary of Gahran's advice, but you should read the post for more detail.
* Find the blogs your audience are already reading. Read the posts and comments for a while so you become familiar with the conversation already in progress. Respect the venue and the people already there.
* Spot your opportunity.
* Write a posting in response on your own blog.
* Leave a comment that points to your posting. Be respectful.
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In the UK, buzz marketing is on the rise. That's the key finding of a new survey from CommentUK. According to the survey, 65% of UK marketers plan on implementing a live buzz campaign in 2007. Interestingly, 85% of those marketers indicated it would be their first buzz campaign.
Other findings include:
* 67% of brands intend to implement a buzz campaign specifically to amplify on-pack and in-store promotions.
* 74% indicated they would use the campaigns to heighten product recall and spread word of mouth.
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Andrea Wojnicki: How About Leveraging Other Relevant Research...?
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Gary Stein: Travelers Going Online for Trip Info
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Kate Niederhoffer: WOM's Shelflife
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Call Center Customers More Loyal than Others
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Heavy Mass Media Consumers Most Influenced by WOM
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WOM works for many businesses, not just those selling "cool" products. Pavement maintenance firm J.B. Bostick has built a $30 billion business paving and repairing roads, and owner Jim Bostick attribute that growth largely to word of mouth. The company invests time and resources in finding and retaining its employees, turning them into unofficial evangelists by providing uniforms, well-maintained equipment, and a generous bonus system.
Great customer service has also been an effective marketing tool in of itself. "We work hard to always do quality work," Bostick said recently. "That leads to happy customers, which results in strong word of mouth advertising. That's how we've grown."
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How do you get local citizens interested in a project of vital interest to their community? Residents of Pollokshields, a Glasgow-area neighborhood, used word of mouth to organize a grassroots campaign to clear clutter, garbage, and litter from its community. Volunteers organized an event called Proud of Pollokshields, met with other local civic groups to secure their involvement, and encouraged participants to tell their friends and family about it as well.
At its first clean-up event, organizers were happily surprised by the 100 people who showed up and collected 14 tons of garbage. So much positive goodwill was spread that Proud of Pollokshields has become an annual event.
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Pollokshields community blog
Nokia Canada was looking for a way to get people talking about a new camera phone, so it worked with Toronto-based Matchstick to recruit 90 bloggers in Toronto and Vancouver. Similar to a blogger outreach program conducted in the US by Sprint, the bloggers were asked to write about the phone if they used it.
Where some brands have expressed concern over the lack of control, Nokia's Mila Mironova believes the opposite. "We believe that it is one of the most honest forms of advertising out there. You can't control what they say."
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Anyone doubting the power of word of mouth to create -- and resolve -- a PR nightmare needs to look at a recent situation involving John Campea of the Movie Blog and Paramount Pictures. According to his play-by-play, Campea posted a picture of a character from a movie still in production. Paramount sent a cease-and-desist letter to his hosting company, prompting the firm to shut the blog down. Although later revealed to be an accident, nothing gets the blogosphere talking like a "David vs. Goliath" controversy like this, and negative WOM spread rapidly about the situation.
Instead of letting the PR nightmare fuel itself, Paramount did the right thing by listening -- and then apologizing. In the end, all was resolved and Campea posted a note explaining how he had been personally contacted by a Paramount senior VP who explained the situation and apologized.
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John Campea's open letter
The Aftermath
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