• Get Your WOM Notebook Ready… Chapter One: Believe

    Posted on February 8th, 2012 by and currently 5 commenting.


    So, here you are… a friend of WOM or maybe you are just starting to explore. Word of Mouth Marketing is a passion for me, and I’m lucky enough to have a career in it. But this didn’t happen by accident. My career took root organically, as a result of my belief in the power of WOM, not because I set out to do it.

    Back in 2001, Brains on Fire partnered with the Department of Health and Environmental Control of South Carolina. We were tasked with the challenge of tackling teen smoking in our state. If you are at all familiar with South Carolina, you probably know tobacco plays a major role in our stat economy, which makes it a delicate – and politically charged — topic. Needless to say, our task was large, and the stakes were high. As if that weren’t challenging enough, South Carolina faced a 36% teen smoking rate.

    We knew we only had one chance to make an impact if we wanted to help our client keep the prevention effort funded. With a budget too small to do a comprehensive statewide media buy, it was time to consider other strategies, so we gathered our notebooks and pencils, and a group of our people (and a couple cameras) hit the road to travel the state and ask teens what was going on in their lives. Yes, we talked about smoking, but for the most part we just talked. We valued what the teens had to say. We took lots of notes, and what we learned from the teens we met on the journey ultimately inspired our plan.

    In the end, we developed a way to arm teenagers with the knowledge to become advocates for other teens. We’re not talking anti-tobacco slogan preaching, rather they were empowered with the confidence to have a conversation about the choice to smoke or not to smoke.

    For us, it was an early lesson learned about WOM. All the ads, t-shirts, slogans and swag in the world can’t replace a person advocating for a cause they truly believe in.

    As a marketer we’re trained to trust OUR instincts, NOT others. But the kids we met gave us hope that together we could make a difference in a teen’s life – one person at a time. Again, not a typical marketing point of view.

    Those days started my notebook collection of interviews, ideas, doodles…and a lot of dead-end thinking. I had no idea how important all those doodles, thoughts, and dead-ends would become.

    You might think this is a simplistic suggestion for starting a word of mouth journey. I often say “It’s about the people, stupid,” but the one tool I believe you need to start the journey of understanding your customers is a simple notebook. For me it stimulates my interaction. A simple question becomes a pathway to explore deeper with dialogue, words and doodles.

    The question we’re asked most often after a presentation (and on our blog) is “Where do I start?” The answer to that question can be found in an even bigger question eloquently expressed in a recent blog post by Ed Keller: “Marketers can’t choose a “social strategy” without first understanding the motivations of consumers to share. There’s your answer: “What motivates your customers to share?” I would also add your employees into that equation, too. So let’s do a little WOM project together. Let’s take a week to start digging into what motivates your employees and your customers to share. Dust off that Moleskine, Field Notes or notepad and let’s have some conversation.

    Here’s what’s on my list for the week:
    • Talk to an employee, take notes
    • Invite a customer for a cup of coffee, take notes
    • Come up with a “why” question, then dig deep into the “why” question.
    • Start to map out a brand to customer, customer to customer touchpoint cycle (online and offline)

    Bonus Question, just cause I want to know:
    • Who was their first customer

    See ya next week… and bring your notebook. Let’s share!

  • Prof.dr.tyler Durden.

    As a swagmonger, I gotta be totally honest. All the swag in the world is pointless, without connecting to a tribe. A waste of time and money, unless there’s a reason to give a shit. I thought we could carpet bomb the world with swag and win the hearts and minds of our ideal prospects. That was shamefully incorrect. No, the swag is secondary, or even thirdary (?) behind people. People and the stories they share. We have an elegant little piece of crystal swag for most of our inner circle,a laser etched goblet thingy. but it’s meaningless without a fellow member to lift it with. Mr.bandicoot said, presciently, ‘it’s not the glass, it’s the clink of the glass.’ yeah. That.

  • http://www.facebook.com/genochurch Geno Church

    Prof… there once was a state that funded a teen tobacco prevention campaign… they did awesome swag… and they gave it all away. Sadly the teenagers that received all this swag… valued it lightly, and today that state no longer has a teen tobacco prevention program.

    To add to your point I simplified greatly but it is one of the reason sadly the program exists no more.

    I love swag too, and we believe it can be very powerful… another lesson we learned was to create swag from two angles conversational swag that inspires, has a point of view… etc. The other angle was aspirational… swag that only the RAGE leads could wear that other teens would aspire to have based on putting skin in the game. This required RAGE leads to really own and not be lazy with conversations… the value came from the interactions with other teens and the leads decisions to give them swag based on that particular conversation.

    Thanks for sharing…

  • http://twitter.com/Ramon_DeLeon Ramon De Leon

    I Love the outcome considering the challenges. I tell the World “Trust Your Instincts” and Be Inspired. When these 2 actions work together the outcome keeps the conversation alive. We all know that it’s what the public says and thinks about us that matters.

    Nice Post.

    #RamonWOW

  • http://www.facebook.com/brucestanley1 Bruce Stanley

    I noticed your use of the word ‘why’:

    If you ask, “Why do you share?”, you illicit the VALUES someone has about sharing. If you ask “How do you share?”, you get to the PRACTICAL steps or actions someone uses.
    I use this techniqe, called laddering, with clients creating meaningful goals for themselves. Laddering finds the right level for their next step or clarifies the values behind a goal. But it could be useful in your investigation too. Have you ever used it?

  • http://www.facebook.com/genochurch Geno Church

    Bruce and Ramon… thanks for stopping by and sharing. To your question Bruce, we don’t use laddering as a specific technique, I would love to hear more. We do have a process we call knowledge sharing the starts our immersion. During that part of the process we pinpoint objectives, and goals.

    Please feel free to share more about laddering if you can…
    Cheers!