State of Word of Mouth Marketing

The following is my speech from this month's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit 2008. It captures my POV on where we are at as a discipline and relects my role as the President of the WOMMA Board.

And yes, I started delivering it while inside the Weinermobile.

Welcome to the 2008 Word of Mouth Marketing Summit. Welcome to the Tipping Point!

This is the year when Word of Mouth marketing goes mainstream – it’s already on everybody’s lips, so-to-speak. There isn’t a CMO, a Communications Executive, a CEO at a big brand, a mid-size or small business that isn’t creating and getting smart on social media and word of mouth programs.

Word of Mouth Marketing is bigger than social media but it’s also what happens when you use social media well.

Isn’t that social media’s main goal  –  activate and amplify word of mouth, participation, contribution, recommendation and action. We are the social media marketing champions and leaders. The promise of social media is not about targeting ad buys in MySpace. It’s not simply technology. It’s about getting people talking and sharing.

It’s bigger than just blogs. Bigger than Facebook. Bigger than Twitter, FriendFeed or Yammer. Word of Mouth includes all of social media – the big tent. And so much more. It’s offline and online.....

Word of Mouth Marketing is at the tipping point. Three big reasons why….

First reason - Pivotal work has been done this year.

• Starbucks launches My Starbuck’s Idea

• Dell uses Twitter to sell a million dollars worth of computers

• Kraft launches a community of fan-customers with My First Taste

• PBS Engage spreads social media and word of mouth through Frontline, Nature, NOVA and all of the shows we love

• HP launches the new Dragon platform through digital influencers not traditional advertising

• And Lenovo powers 100 Olympic athlete bloggers to tell their story behind the scenes at the Beijing Olympics

Word of Mouth Marketing is at the tipping point.

Second reason? 
Word of mouth marketing – online and offline – passion-filled advocacy, smart use of social media - helped elect the next President of the United States - President Elect Barack Obama.

No matter what your politics, the power of this story – how they used WOM tools not just to raise awareness, deepen engagement and participation but to actually drive votes – that story will propel word of mouth marketing forward like a bullet train. And if you had questions about how the President-elect can keep the social media train charging down the track – just visit Change.gov. That’s the site for the Office of the President Elect and they want to hear from all of us. The social political campaign becomes the social Presidency.

Businesses around the world will look to President Obama’s campaign as a new gold standard in advocacy and action.

Word of Mouth Marketing is at the tipping point.

Third reason?
The economy just fell off the edge of the world. This is serious business. People’s lives are deeply affected and we all know it’ll get worse in the coming months.

Catalogues are thinner and fewer this holiday season. Marketers question and trim their traditional ad spend. Online advertising grows as marketers shift dollars there but when success is measured in fractions of 1 percent you have to wonder if we are really connecting with people.

Word of Mouth Marketing drives brand loyalty and customer action harder and more efficiently than most traditional marketing alone.

During a recession, only the most efficient marketing strategies survive – ones that can drive action and build the strength of the brand – that is what word of mouth marketing is all about

By 2011, Word of Mouth Marketing spend will be north of $3.5B.

Word of Mouth Marketing is at the tipping point.

A Member & a Fan
I told you that essentially I am just another member like you. 

And I am a fan. Before we tell you the big projects we are working on at WOMMA and the must-attend sessions at this Summit, I need to tell you why I belong to WOMMA.

I need to belong to a community of believers – who believe in the power and the potential of energizing and amplifying people’s passions and interests.

Who believe in giving fans a bigger megaphone, a taller soapbox. And selling  - by showing you care for customers through listening and responding. By believing in your own brand – that it can hold up to a discussion with customers and be richer for it. A community that sees that we can earn people’s attention and engagement by providing them some value not by battering them with more advertising. 

Word of Mouth Marketing is the breath of fresh air in the marketing landfill we find ourselves in. We believe in empowering people to talk and share about what matters most to them. And we respect their power…..

David Ogilvy told marketers – “the customer is not a moron, she is your wife…”

Today, he would say– “the customer is not a moron, she is a blogger, a facebook group owner, a message board maven, a dedicated fan, a house party host. She is a person like you or me”

He wanted us to be better marketers.

WOMMA’s purpose is to make us all better marketers – more effective, smarter, more innovative and producing greater and greater business results

How does WOMMA help us?
We’re a community – we’re a   “best practices” community where we share practical knowledge and ethics with other marketers like ourselves. We are building a category, a discipline.  WOMMA provides the platform for sharing and learning – like this week’s summit, like yesterday’s research symposium, like our online members center with it’s the case study library and “news-you-can-use” to sell-in, create and measure WOMM programs - And you provide the ideas. You provide the conversations. You provide the passion.

Your efforts drive WOMMA forward.

You are the tipping point.  

WOMMA Fans come together to learn from each other. That’s what this organization was all about when it started – that’s what it is all about today.

A place for the transformational marketer - big brands, small business entrepreneurs, agency experts, technology innovators, next gen marketers.

Ideas come from everywhere. That’s why we are an open community of WOMM enthusiasts.

The First WOMMA Tattoo

How deep does our fandom go? Do we have a true blue fan amongst us – I mean red black and blue? To find out, we are going to offer a free tattoo done live to anyone willing to get the WOMMA logo burned into their body. This is what separates the WOM men from the boys, women from the girls. What is a tattoo but something to talk about – a tribal communication…

Welcome to the live tattoo parlor here at the WOMMA Summit!

While you ponder where you will get that WOMMA tattoo -  member Spike Jones has raised his hand to get his own tattoo – a mark that no matter what the design will forever be known as the “WOMMA SUMMIT Now we’re taking care of business” tattoo. And we’ll follow it live throughout the day. It’s going to be happening right over there. If Spike cries out – we’ll know it!

How else does WOMMA help me become a better marketer?

By providing best-practice in ethics. WOMMA’s Honesty ROI and Ethics Guidelines are the industry standards and have helped hundreds of brands train and educate marketing and communications staff on effective and ethical WOMM practices

WOMMA leads word of mouth marketing performance and ROI measurement to help marketers integrate WOMM into their marcom plans today. We deliver the best models of performance measurement, WOM value, and decision-making information for today’s marcom executive.

Nothing is more important today to our discipline than measurement. How you rate performance and ROI is the number one question I hear from brands across the world. 

Yesterday was our fourth annual Research Symposium. If you don’t have your new edition of Measuring Word of Mouth –the best cases of real world measurement – get it. Your CMO will be impressed.  And we have  anew deal on it as of today…..

And WOMMA is in constant Beta.
• We have a new board of brands and practitioners committed to supporting members and our leadership
• We have best practice cases celebrated by the WOMMIE Awards. These are the folks doing great work
• We have a new, dynamic Executive Director who knows how to harness the power of a member-driven organization
• We have Project Now – 5 bold initiatives that will keep us focused and will return value to all of our members immediately. These are the most essential programs to move our business forward

Comments

[cristina]

This was always going to be. only the big companies have turned theie eyes towards this lately. but this will kill the real word of mouth recommendations one is so used to trusting.

[Womens Health]

Word of mouth has been with us forever. But word of mouth marketing is a new marketing specialty that is as actionable, trackable, and plannable as any other form of marketing.Word of mouth marketing (WOM) is an umbrella term for dozens of techniques that can be used to engage and energize customers. WOM includes viral marketing, blogs, communities,

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Word of Mouth Marketing is bigger than social media but it’s also what happens when you use social media well.

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How you rate performance and ROI is the number one question I hear from brands across the world.

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It’s not simply technology. It’s about getting people talking and sharing.