Many marketers are seeking to utilize the power of Word of Mouth (WOM) to benefit their brand, but when marketers go too far in trying to manipulate WOM to meet their own agendas, they risk not only destroying the benefit, but turning it against their brand. When it comes to the most blatant form of manipulation, “shill marketing,” the members of the ARF’s Word of Mouth Marketing Panel were agreed. Their opinion was summed up by Jim Nail, CMO of Cymfony, “I beg of you, don’t do it. If trust is the currency, and [word of mouth marketing] becomes too gray, you will devalue the currency.”
The topic of word of mouth has received a lot of interest of late, and so it was no surprise that the WOM Panel was well attended. What was a surpise was that I got to speak within the first few minutes of the session.
I should have kept my mouth shut after Nat Puccio’s presentation earlier in the day. Nat suggested that word of mouth was actually less effective today than it might have been previously due to the fragmentation of the family group. He doubted that online WOM was as effective a replacement. I mentioned that research just conducted by Millward Brown confirmed that face-to-face word of mouth was more prevalent and better trusted than online word of mouth. This became the topic of conversation at the WOM panel and I had to repeat the key findings for them. Overall, the Panel seemed to feel the findings made sense, even if the people representing online measurement companies did not necessarily like it.
But back to the point about WOM being a potential threat to your brand’s health. The Panel was agreed that brand experience was key to generating word of mouth- both good and bad. An unexpected bad experience is likely to generate a more vehement response than a good one, and, if that bad experiences stimulates WOM, it may well have a multiplier effect. Unless the issue is remedied in some way, the person who had the bad experience may not only defect, but may put off potential prospects while they’re doing it. To put a positive spin on it, Peter Blackshaw, CMO, Nielsen BuzzMetric suggested that listening to WOM often resulted in inspiration on how to re-tool operations to avoid negative experiences.
And then there is the ‘boomerang effect’. That’s where WOM marketing efforts get out of hand and come back to hit the sender. The Panel were very clear on the fact that they believed that spinning WOM was the best way to destroy the credibility of a medium that relies on relevant and genuine content. As Diane Hessan, President and CEO, Communispace Corporation, pointed out, people who have a deep, emotional attachment to a brand will probably be insulted if the brand offers to pay them to promote it. “Only when there is no relationship do you have to pay people to talk about you.”
The key take-away for me was that brands need to have a long-term strategy to develop WOM. John Sheehan, Account Director, Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners concluded, “Brands are jumping on board WOM without having a real rationale to do so.” Most brands that have grown via WOM have done so because they had a great product or service. If you are just a parity player, pursuing WOM could be a very risky strategy, particularly if you need to pay people to spread the word for you.
(37 votes, average: 3.19 out of 5)
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March 28th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Wilkinet (a baby carrier) is a reasonable sized brand in a fairly niche market, but a market where WOM is key (pregnant women talk a lot and like to compare their latest gadget). We’re blessed with a product that is of ‘recommendable’ quality - and as a result over 60% of our consumer come to us (either direct to our website or to a retail outlet) on the basis of a personal recommendation. Some recent consumer research (quant study among our direct buyers) has thrown up an interesting learning about the importance of WOM, not just for building awareness but also for helping improve product experience.
What we found was: people who were completely or mostly satisfied with the product were significantly more likely to have heard about the brand through WOM than those who were quite dissatisfied… this unhappy group’s route to purchase was most likely to have been through their own ’solitary’ path (searching for ‘baby carrier’ in google and finding our site and/or seeing one of our press ads).
Our product has a bit of a learning curve to get to grips with it - it appears that without the personal peer support (or an understanding through WOM what they should expect to make it work) that people are more likely to have a hard time with it.
On a final note - our dissatisfied consumers are just as likely as our happy ones to have heard about us via a message forum… So WOM from message boards for us are a quick way to help awareness - but don’t have the experiential support network that your friend at ante-natal class might offer.
Now I must get back to how I encourage our consumers to recommend the product to their friends more often whilst heeding Diane’s warning not to insult them…
March 30th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Thanks Gideon, that’s an interesting observation. So the WOM that helped people find the product had also primed them on how to use it, unlike the others. This might apply to many different product and service categories where some user expertise helps improve the experience.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
This sounds like a really ineresting session Nigel. The MRS Conference in London also had a couple of sessions that covered WoM and blog marketing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get along to hear what people had to say.
The level of excitement around WoM and/or buzz marketing seems to be a bit lower on this side of the Atlantic, but it’s definitely picking up.
One of the interesting aspects of WoM is giving people a reason to talk: creating ‘triggers’ for the conversation. A lot of word of mouth marketing activity seems to be about creating these triggers, but here is a really strong role for brand experience as well. And it doesn’t run the risk of artificiality.
The other key area of potential for WoM measurement is in understanding what people think about brands, grasping how they perform in the eyes of the punter and planning communications. It sounds as though this is what Peter Blackshaw was referring to. Just listening to what’s being said can be hugely powerful. In the same way that WoM is stimulated by brands that over-deliver on their promises, brand owners can learn a lot about their brands by comparing the consumers’ perceptions with their vision of what the brand means.
April 4th, 2006 at 3:42 am
here’s an excellent example: For two years as a commuter I combined train travel with a folding bike - a Brompton. This bike has a whizzy folding mechanism that takes no more than a couple of seconds from ride-able bike to small carry-on. But the really clever way is how Brompton have been able to exploit this in their marketing. Recognising the fact that collapsing their bikes on a crowded station platform is a real conversation-starter among a captive-target audience (at least in Britain anyway), all new Bromptons are sold with a set of marketing cards containing product details etc, zip-tied to the underneath of the saddle, to give away to interested observers. With relatively little atl advertising, in a flat category, Brompton has relied on word of mouth to leverage unique technology and deliver phenomenal growth.
April 6th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Agreed…Listening is now getting more and more important and will be key in the future..market researchers should stop asking questions only…and start listening!