Articles tagged with: WOM
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?
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A french company called BuzzParadise has just launched. Their aim is to connect influential consumers (bloggers, experts, passionate consumers…). with Brands, helping to design brand communication campaigns, using word of mouth to spread key brand messages. They are hoping to create a platform that allows opinion leaders to take part in VIP events, providing exclusive information or the ability to be the first to test products.
P&G is launching a influencer site aimed at Mum’s.
The site promises early access to products and samples and the ability to tell big companies what your think of these samples.
In exchange for receiving these early product samples, usuage information and other discounts, mothers will be asked to share their opinions, fill out surveys, and participate in new product trials.
P&G previously launched the Tremor site, which is aimed at selecting and then marketing to influencial teens.
