Frontiering Talk

People are continuing to talk about brands, and a recent Mediapost  article by Jack Loechner suggests that there are 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations every day in the US alone.

Whilst 90% of these conversations take place offline, that still means that 350 million discussions are happening daily.  Can you afford not to start listening?

Tags: Social Networks, WOM, Word of Mouth

FreeRice is a clever website that donates 10 grams of rice every time you correctly answer an english word defintion. So in principle, you expand your english vocabulary and feed the hungray at the same time.

Perspective: I think “Not for profits” are succeeding in leveraging the demand to help global issues, by both producing engaging sites. The combination of these reasons produce a powerful incentive for people to spread the site through word of mouth / mouse to others.

via CTV.ca

Tags: Frontiering Websites, WOM, Word of Mouth

Perhaps because alcohol products have had greater restrictions advertising on mainstream channels and therefore have had more time to experiment with other levers. But it is now more evident with the announcement that Jim Beam’s CMO Rory Finlay is committed to refocusing it’s advertising budget into activities aimed at generating Word of mouth.

Word of mouth marketing is not new. It started around the camp-fire when people debated over what were the best hunting tools, and conversations continued into market places where trade flourished. But since the invention of the TV, which radically changed the way brands spoke to consumers, many big brands have either forgotten or ignored the levers that drive word of mouth marketing.

Perspective: The science of how you measure word of mouth marketing is still in it’s infancy, and no doubt organisations like WOMMA will continue to promote various metrics to try to standardise the way word of mouth can be measured. But there are some quite simple initiatives that marketeers can do to maximise the word of mouth marketing effect of their campaigns.

Here’s a check-list that it worth considering as part of every campaign or activity, which should help you enhance the word of mouth marketing impact.
1. What conversations will this campaign drive?
e.g new product feature discussions, boasting about the experience, will they be category discussions or specific to your brand?
2. What mediums will these conversations use?
e.g. at an event, on an online discussion group, social networking commentary, dinner table discussions
3. How can we make it easier for these conversations to take place?
e.g. Can you provide photos of an event that consumers can download and post to their social networks?
4. What can I do to monitor some of these conversations? (one of the easiest success measures is an increase in online discussions that unlike tacit conversations are recorded. Hint, you need to know what the existing conversational levels are to measure a change, so if you don’t have an online monitoring service, consider starting one.
5. Testing
Can I test the campaign’s word of mouth impact before hand or with a smaller sample? For example, run the campaign in an area where you can more easily measure the impact, this will provide an opportunity to make any changes before a major launch.
6. Incentives
What incentives can I give people to share the conversations with others, and what ways are there to reward this? Are there opportunities to allow people to create Consumer generated content to express their opinions.
7. Involve your staff.
Can you utilise your existing employees to generate conversations related to the campaign?
8. Call to action
Does the campaign have calls to action which allow people to sign up to special offers?
9. Use your evangelists.
Do you have a record of brand advocates, or a loyalty program, and if so, have you involved them or made them aware of the campaign? if you don’t, then use this campaign to start a database.
10. Evaluate the results
Make sure you learn from the results, get into the habit of asking these questions before the campaign is designed, so you can change where necessary.

Tags: News, Social Network, WOM, Word of Mouth

So you’ve taken over a leading beer brand from the 50s, 60s and 70s which now has earnt the nickname “Nasty Gansett”.
How do you resurrect a brand when you don’t have a large bucket of cash to throw at the usual advertising channels?

Use Word of Mouth marketing of course !

Mr. Hellendrung shown in the picture above, bought the rights for the Narragansett brand from Pabst Brewing Co. in 2005. He then started to revie the famous brand and start to build some differentiations from the large national brands.
He has done this by creating a nostalgia connection to the brand, which has both attracted new consumers and restored the loyalty of those who remembered it. His first step was to hire the original brew master to restore the taste of the product to what it was.

Word of mouth is cheaper than conventional advertising, but takes more time. Mr. Hellendrung took his product to many bars and clubs and personally convincing the bar tenders and owners to taste the new brand. “We may not reach as many people, but we develop passionate relationships,” he says.

The results?
The beer was bringing in $100k in turnover when he bought the brand, and it is expected to do $5 million this year.

PErspective: This is a great example of the patience required to build a brand with Word of Mouth. Sure it does take a little more time than putting a large TV campaign together, but the rewards are enormous loyalty and steady growth that removes you from reliance on future tv campaigns.

Tags: WOM

Here’s another example of personalising a product .. this time Dolls.

The company was created after a couple created Dolls of themselves to help their daughter adjust to day care. The idea spread through word of mouth, and now Tiny Pocket People ships dolls all over the world.

Perspective: This is a great concept. I wonder why they don’t sell kits so that you can “make your own” doll … perhaps that is one for the patchwork quilting industry to run with. Perhaps the next version should include a small mp3 player that plays pre-recorded sounds of the person the doll is modelled on.

Tags: WOM

Most major cities seem to offer tours in large often open topped double decker buses, in London you can even go on amphibion ducktours which can go in the river as well as on the road.

But Gocars SF have taken a different approach and offer funky 3 wheel moped cars with an automated GPS, complete with a voice tour. They have expanded to San Diego and also Miami . .and you can buy your own franchise for around USD 50K-100K.

Perspective: This is “Frontiering” use of technology to promise a new and different way to see a city, and because the experience is so different, consumers are in a sense advertising the service as they use it! In addition, it’s one experience that would be hard not to talk about, so Gocars SF will benefit from “Word of Mouth Marketing”.

via Springwise

Tags: WOM

Dave Dal Molin interviewed me recently for this article that appeared in the Shanghai Business Times http://www.sbr.net.cn/

He was exploring how Word of Mouth could be used in cities with limited tv coverages.

Have a read of what Dave found about the Stove Guys.

In order to understand why sales growth was flat, Hebei Guanglei, a manufacturer of coal-burning stoves for heating homes, sent out a research team to investigate the largest market for its products — the Chinese countryside. The team, led by Beijing-based marketing consultancy Velev, visited over 600 rural families in four different provinces.

Traveling around the countryside, a mysterious pattern developed: In many villages, every single stove owner used the same brand of stove. The researchers named this the “jiucai phenomenon”, after a Chinese vegetable that always grows in clumps.

“These people are completely different from city folk. They have their own way of thinking, their own customs,” says the research team leader. The researchers noted that compared to the typical urbanite, who may never speak to his neighbor, rural dwellers thrive on close communication and get-togethers. Access to information is limited– many peasants leave their small villages only a few times per year, so face-to-face contact is restricted and television channels, newspapers and magazines, if they exist, are extremely few.

It was discovered that the main determinant behind which stove brand was being used in a particular village was a team of guys that installed the stoves. Whichever stove brand was found in the homes of these two or three “stove experts” was likely to become the dominant, or even exclusive, brand for an entire village. This was a natural result of word of mouth and limited access to information outside the circle of village life.

Armed with this knowledge, Guanglei employed some excellent word of mouth marketing strategies.

Partnering with key influencers: It cultivated mutually beneficial relationships with the villages’ stove installers, giving them free, logo-embossed uniforms, tools and performance-based benefits. Guanglei also offered company stock to stove distributors, another key group of influencers.

Identifying when/where WOM communication takes place: Periodic country market gatherings for buying/selling goods are about the only time a normally dispersed population gathers en masse. Guanglei created a traveling drum and lion dance team to create buzz at these events.

Listening to customers: The research team discovered that people used stoves not only to heat homes, but also to boil water and dry shoes. Guanglei responded by adding an iron frame and grill to its stoves.

Supporting social causes: It created positive WOM by giving peasant students free Guanglei-embossed book bags.

And here’s a quote I gave Dave for the article.

“The gathering of a tribe around a campfire or village market is where real consumer stories are shared, and that is the heart of word-of-mouth recommendations,” says Frontiering’s Ian Farmer, a WOM expert with extensive experience marketing in Asia. He notes similarities between such traditional gatherings and today’s online communities. “Companies that know how to market to traditional villages can expect to create a lot more loyalty for their brands.”

Tags: WOM

Here’s a clever way to use your consumers to market your product to their friends.
You provide them with a simple widget that they can paste into their Myspace page which provides them with active content on a subject they are passionate about.

That’s exactly what Roller Warehouse have done with this Rolling News Widget. The news widget scrolls current Roller Skating News from the Aggressive Skate Blog.

As an additional incentive, consumers who post this Widget on their Myspace are entitled to a 5% discount.

Perspective: What information can you give your passionate consumers in a easy to use way like this?

via Technology Evangelist

Tags: WOM

So often companies neglect one of the most important parts of a sales cycle, and that is the moment after purchase when the consumer actually opens the box !

Excitement or Disappointment ?

Who can forget the electronic Christmas presents that are unboxed without batteries included.

Now there is a blog dedicated to capturing and sharing “unboxing” moments. Unboxing.com is full of positive and negative examples which manufacturers would do well to consume.

Perspective: Unboxing represents a great opportunity for launching word of mouth .. or detraction. Do you measure this?

Tags: WOM

Tayfun King from the BBC writes an excellent article on how game development is evolving to include provisions for Consumer Generated Content.

Perspective: Game development is costing upwards of US$20 million, so it makes sense to tap into Consumers to create content which reduces costs. However, I think the big positive is to extend the games life and spread the games usage through word of mouth.

Tags: WOM

In the UK, P&G has created an interesting site for their Tampax brand which allows consumers to create their own ringtones. Anyone can create a ringtone, but you need to enter a Unique Packaging Code found on Tampax packs to send the ringtone to your phone.

Embracing the Consumer Generated Content trend, Tampax is showcasing the best entries as voted by other consumers. Winners receive a Motorola phone.

I think’s it’s a clever site which will certainly appeal to the younger demographic. It’s another example of creating a destination site that ties in nicely with the product, creates an ongoing value for the consumer, and creates a foundation for word of mouth marketing.

Tags: WOM

Most of us can appreciate the problem of organising information related to a project, activity and then sharing updates on tasks, and associated information with other trused members of a team.

Basecamp was perhaps the first known web 2.0 application to attack this problem and provides a very professional web based project management solution.
Joyent is another web 2.0 collaboration tool, with integrated tagging.

But what I want to cover today is Foldera which only just came out of stealth mode into Beta about 2 weeks ago, Note: you still have to queue up for an invite, but this creates something of an “in-club” and adds to the excitement when your email invite finally comes through! And although I am still waiting, I can definately see what all the buzz is about, as Foldera does seem to have done their homework.

Foldera is the new way to:
Communicate with others in context
Secure your vital information instantly
Access and Manage your applications, teams, activities and information from wherever you are
Notify everyone at the same time when something changes
Share, Organize, and Archive your projects and information
Personalize your Foldera experience to match the way you work.
Save time and Simplify your life

See Techcrunch for screen shots. Foldera really does seem to provide a solution for groups wanting to stay organised by dynamically keeping your project folders current. They seemed to have cleverly covered most forms of online collaboration and allow up to 250 meg of data storage. Presumably they will offer a premium service for higher end users under a fee based structure and it could be a definate alternative to Microsoft’s Office Live.

It’s certainly a big idea, but what is amazing is that they have had 1 million signups. No television ads, a great example of how word of mouth can spread quickly when a few influencial bloggers write about your story!

Tags: WOM

Flickr, now owned by Yahoo is probably the worlds leading photo sharing site. One of the frustrations of creating an online album, is the hassle of having to get pictures from your camera or camera phone to your pc, and then uploading them to flickr.

If you have one of these handsets, the problem is solved by a cool application called ShoZo. ShoZo handles the sending of your images, text or video and cleverly is able to continue the upload should the connection ever drop out.

ShoZo recently was a winner in the GSM Association 2006 awards.

Auto-tagging and geo-locations is a feature that is coming soon, and I am sure this will only increase the popularity of photo sharing services like Flickr or Webshots.

New Marketing perspectives? This frontiering technology could easily be used to facilitate entries to competitions such as “send in a photo of you enjoying our product”. A phone manufacturer / Flickr joint promotion .. What better way to demonstrate camera phone features, than to deliver this application with the phone encouraging people to create a Flickr account, which in turn would generate a degree of word of mouth buzz (a real product experience worth talking and showing other people).

Tags: WOM