This week the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit brings 500+ marketers together for the 6th time (?) to review the best of the best (WOMMY Awards), share successful approaches with fellow marketers and wonder when the discipline goes mainstream. When will a major FMCG (fast moving consumer goods company), auto manufacturer, beverage company, software solutions company put word of mouth at the heart of all of their marketing and communications?
This is my 6th year particpating in the Summit and in the organization. I joined for Ogilvy 6 or so years ago, became a board member, board president and am now a past president. An insider's energy flowed through our first Summits. We were sure we were talking and sharing about the most disruptive and powerful trend in marketing and communications - the power of all forms of word of mouth to build long and short term value for brands. The oldest form of marketing had become new again and more powerful than ever with the adoption of digital habits, the rise of social media and the daily tsunami of messages from marketers and consumers alike that caused us all to filter out all but the most relevant messages and those from our friends and families.
Surely, the value of customer advocacy was obvious and would soon become the center of all marketing and communications activity. That was 2005. It didn't quite happen as I had expected. Our collective focus remained on social media. Few in big brand territory used the term 'word of mouth marketing' never mind wrote a brief where word of mouth was the primary goal.
Word of Mouth has finally hit the mainstream - under other names
After six-plus years of WOMMA Summits, I am seeing huge brands shift their attention to customer and brand advocacy, reviews and referral programs, integrated social media marketing and communications - all applications of word of mouth marketing. CMO's are backing customer and stakeholder advocacy programs on a grand scale. I know 4 major brands now exploring brand advocacy programs that put word of mouth at the center of the campaign. In many ways this is the explosion the members of WOMMA had so earnestly expected 5 years ago.
Still, word of mouth marketing has not become the 'term of art' I had expected. Those same CMO's launching big brand advocacy programs call them that - 'brand advocacy.' If asked, I am guessing most would acknowledge that its all word of mouth. Plenty of other brands remain focused on expanding and operationalizing their social media marketing and communications without any sense that the value behind that effort is anchored in word of mouth marketing - getting people to pass long messages and recommendations.
4 Factors Driving the Current Adoption of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)
Here are 4 reasons driving both the recent adoption and the continuing obliviousness of word of mouth marketing
Language confusion - Social media, advocacy, earned media - these are all used in place of word of mouth marketing to mean something very similar. Each wants to activate and focus people to share their authentic interest and support for ideas, products and services. We have years of post-industrial revolution marketing organized around marketing and communications disciplines like PR, advertising, direct response and so forth. Business and education is organized around these disciplines. It was naive of me to think big brands would start calling their top talent, word of mouth marketers. There is something apparently insubstantial in that name. 'Advocacy' seems to be the popular synonym at the moment. Call it whatever, brands - like those that participate in WOMMA - now know that some people -like us at Ogilvy - have been honing our skills in the behavioral economics of driving people to advocate. That's the best part of WOMMA - the community of marketers who want to understand how to craft and manage programs that get people to share authetically.
My guess is that "social media marketing and communications" is more likely to evolve as a term that covers both online and offline WOM than the term "word of mouth marketing" is to rise to become the dominant term. (e.g. the former gets 388m search returns in Bing, whereas, the latter gets 2.9M - uodate: inspired by a similar search conducted by Gary Spangler3-4 years ago)
Younger CMO's - no big mystery, but younger CMO's have taken the reins at many brands. These folks dont have to be convinced in the promise of social media and also understand that getting people to share with their networks is central to their future marketing success. They may not call it WOMM but they are pursuing it.
The Facebook Effect - The 700 million pound gorilla gets a lot of attention as brands spending upwards of $900m in marketing overall have spent thsi year forming their bespoke partnerships with the company. If you have ever seen Facebook's ad sales decks, its all word of mouth powered by social advertising. They have caught the attention of serious, deep-pocketed marketers and introduced them to the magic of word of mouth marketing - a phrase they never use.
More Level Measurement Field - while the simplistic value of a fan still eludes us, overall word of mouth measurement has gotten so much stronger even while we build a body of experience data to compare this year's effort to last year's. At the same time that the measurement models improve, they call into question the historical measurement models of impressions, click-throughs and more. These traditional measures just don't seem to matter as much. Word of mouth measurement is causing us to question how we measure and value other marketing. This has both attracts marketers and repels some who don't relish the idea of wrangling with the Firesign Theatre-esque question that 'everything you know is wrong.'
The Best Social and Word of Mouth Marketers
So I look forward to pending a few days with some of the most interesting and smart marketers I know at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit. We have stuck together over these years and that community speaks to the strength of the subject matter. I look forward to seeing:
- Ed Keller and Brad Fay and their future forward way of measuring and understanding word of mouth at scale
- Paul Rand who has been driving change in one of the other big marketing holding companies even while building his own pirate ship
- Rod Brooks from Pemco who proves that you can put word of mouth at the center of your marketing for an insurance company!
- Christine Cea who is changing Unilever, period
- Gary Spangler continuing to lead at DuPont
- David Rabjohns helping marketers understand at MotiveQuest
- and so many more.....
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