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  • The Word of Mouth Revival

    Posted on May 20th, 2009 by Geno and currently 6 commenting.

    Word of Mouth Marketing has taken it on the chin lately. Social Media has grabbed the spotlight as the tools to use to create Word of Mouth. Last week WOMMA’s WOMM-U launched a comeback with a ferocious people-powered counter punch (in the interest of total transparency, Brains on Fire is a governing member of WOMMA and on the Board of Directors). But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s go back to the beginning.

    Last week was a blur, the Brains on Fire Fire Sessions and then right out the door to WOMM-U in Miami. But, after some time to reflect on last week, it was, in my opinion, a great week for Word of Mouth Marketing. WOMMA’s WOMM-U event falls in my top two of all WOMMA events, and I’ve attended them all.

    Why? I heard less conversations about tactics and pitching of services and more conversations about strategy and what’s working and what’s not working. Both events were powered by dialogue.

    I shared a workshop session with Chris Aarons of soon to change their name Buzz Corps. We had a lot of fun sharing the lessons and differences of building a long-term sustainable word of mouth program. This dynamic facilitated great discussions that often lead to folks lingering long after the workshop ended and over drinks.

    The first WOMMA event in Chicago four short years ago was an inspiring opening round, urging all of us to be inspired by the customer. Now we have so many powerful tools that we can put into the ring and just manage safely from the corner.  Who can blame us? We can now see all of our comments and the faults of what used to be trusted brands.

    WOMM-U was the great hope. The battle is still on, and brands and institutions are not giving up in these difficult economic times. Brands from Texas Instruments to Disney want to engage in the ring of conversations. Yes many tools will be applied – but not before engagement happens with the real stakeholders – employees and customers.

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  • http://womma.org Tarah Remington

    Geno,

    Great post! Thanks so much for the WOMM-U shout-out and WOMMA love. Your sentiments are much appreciated!

    Hope to see you at the Marketing Summit in November.

    Cheers,
    Tarah

  • http://brainsonfire.com Geno

    Thanks Tarah, just shouting about how I feel. See ya in November.

  • http://www.vistasad.com atul chatterjee

    Word of mouth has an equivalent in the brick and mortar world but is not so powerful. Just getting buzz is not enough. It has to be backed up by solid information backing.
    The real challenge will be to cause ripples which affect the brick and mortar world.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Geno

    atul, thanks for the comment. I too believe word of mouth is the brick… The brick that builds a powerful strategy. That strategy is supported by the mortar of social media strategies and off line strategies. Buzz is just one type of mortar in a word of mouth marketing strategy mix.

    The ripples you speak of can only happen as stakeholders-employees and customers take up your mission and make it become theirs.

  • http://www.escalatenow.com Stuart Sheldon

    Geno & Atul:

    My brain’s on fire with your spirit. I need to argue a common theme in several of your posts:

    The digital environment does not define/exclusively contain Social Media. Said another way, there is as much, if not more, Social Media created in the “bricks and mortar” real world as there is in the digital world. There is plenty of data to support my assertion, so I won’t burden you with it here. I ask you both to consider where and how you limit Social Media.

    Stu

  • http://maxmyweb.com-u/c Gary Piano

    Hi Folks and hopefully unsolicited visitors may speak on this subject though uncalled for advice on the golf course makes me nauseous. In any event, Agnostic; “a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study”, “One who professes ignorance, or denies that we have any knowledge, save of phenomena; one who supports agnosticism, neither affirming nor denying the existence of a personal Deity, a future life, etc.”, disbelieves, questioner, scoffer, leery, in a quandary and you get the picture. Now take the contrary side for just a moment; trusting, certain, believe, non-doubting, confident, convinced and so on and so on. There are literally 1000′s of Social Networks out there today. The fact is coming that only a few will survive. This means when we get through these difficult times the consumer will relax and think rationally. Personally, I have no idea what a twitter does that is so exciting that companies are chasing down the Alpha User. What I do understand though is the brand MEK JEANS became immediately popular in Japan when Kane Reeves was seen leaving a restaurant wearing a pair. I won’t even go see his movies! LinkedIn doesn’t really fall into that Soc Cat because it’s business and considered the most credible. Bill Gates has his profile on there, perhaps this is why, there’s only something like 60 million users and people are signing up to LinkedIn in record numbers. This economy has treated LinkedIn well because of the lack of good jobs/any jobs. ping.fm is a good one for reaching people. Blast something of yours out, it reaches millions of people in seconds and wow, who knows what that can lead to. I agree with Spike that it’s still about strategy, strategy and more of it. NOW it’s strategic planning incorporating these Social Networks. If Belk in wanted you to come up with a campaign for their laptop stand where would you begin? I would listen to the client, obviously cover the demo which I can intuitively estimate to be 12 – 24 and would be insistent and perhaps unrelenting that MySpace be a big part of our strategic planning. It’s not the only way to skin a cat but it does have proven merit. Think about it this way as well, you’re invited to a party that your colleague is going to. It’s at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles. All the CEO’S are going to be there from every major company up and down the west coast. The economy is the best we have ever seen it, sales is told, mandated to spend a lot every quarter, everyone is advertising, you can’t get a anyone to say no to you… and the odd thing is, you will be the only one form an ad agency at this party. Do you NOT go?

    And remember this now so you’re not in a corner later, wireless technology, telecommunications and hand held devices is really going to make Social Media Agnostic (Nice sounding acronym anyway – SMA) take off to heights we are not currently thinking about. Pod cast, video, Interactive games… this is changing the entire way we do business, and how we live, how we prepare for the day even. If you’re old enough what would you have said to your Dad when you were about 10 if he told you we would get to talk and see one another on a computer monitor in his/her lifetime… you might smell his breath before you laughed out loud. I’ll wrap below;

    Web Intelligence is the study and Research of the application of Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology on the Web in order to create the next generation of products, services and frameworks based on the Internet.

    Although individual Web based information systems are constantly being deployed, advanced issues and techniques for developing and for benefiting from Web Intelligence still remain to be systematically studied. Broadly speaking, Web Intelligence exploits Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Information Technology on the Web and Internet.

    It is the key and the most urgent research field of IT for business intelligence that is happening today.

    If you read and got anything out of the above then great. If you read it and though what a bunch of horse manure then this is cool. And, if you didn’t read it but are walking around saying you heard it sucked then you have just made me smile. Maybe Spike has it nailed, Our Culture, stupid. There has never been 3 simple words that were ever stated more truly!

    gary piano
    Asheville, NC