It’s hard to believe it’s a week since I was in Vegas at the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) Summit, which brought together over 600 marketers, agencies, brands, academics and researchers over three days to share thought leadership, case studies, best practice and provocative debate. Over the next few weeks running up to Christmas I’ll be showcasing some of the best keynotes and insights from the event, and I thought I’d kick off with a personal perspective.
As President of WOMMA UK, this year I was heading up aninternational panel examining the global differences in word of mouth.
via WOMMA@Flickr; L-R: me, Barak, Craig, Jo, Shige
The idea for the session came from my experiences last year - I saw several excellent case studies from the likes of Tropicana and Mom Central but also realised that the very ‘American’ approach just would not wash with many European consumers.
1000heads creates pan-global campaigns for clients such as Nokia, Canon and SKINS and we have offices in London, New York, Sydney, Berlin and Paris, so we’re particularly sensitive to international WOM variations. Particularly in the UK, there is fierce protection of individual independence, reluctance to be allied officially with a brand, and suspicion of over-partisanship, so gung-ho, brand-heavy strategies would not be as welcome, or as influential, as they are in the States.
So this year, I assembled an eclectic team – Global Head of Digital for Nokia Craig Hepburn, dynamite Australian social media consultant Jo Jacobs, WOM Japan member Shige Ota and consumer psychologist and WOM economics specialist Professor Barak Libai from Tel Aviv University – to consider such questions as:
How willing is your region/culture to evangelise about brands?
How does the economic and technical infrastructure of the region shape WOM opportunities?
How and how extensively is social media used in your region?
What are some of the conversational triggers and taboos that affect brand engagement in your region?
To be honest, it’s amazing that these questions aren’t tackled more often, and the energy of the debate reflected the audience’s interest.
Among other insights, Barak explained the differing communication patterns of countries as determined by their collectivism or individualism; Shige emphasised how the anonymity of Japanese social media culture impacts on their brand conversation; Jo noted that Australians as a nation rebel against vulgar or overt brand association; and Craig described the challenges of promoting Nokia in its native country Finland, where sisu – the concept of strong, uncomplaining silence – is a cultural ideal.
One point that emerged was how important the basic challenges of differing infrastructures, governments and languages can be. In much of Australia broadband is so expensive that sophisticated augmented experiences just wouldn’t work. The censorship in the far East leads to more specialised social communities with localised spheres of influence. The fact is that if you want to transfer a US campaign globally, it takes people on the ground in each country dedicated to adapting and updating engagement in a way that works for their region.
An interesting question from the floor highlighted the different attitudes towards alcohol that affect marketing from drinks brands; but we also discovered that, similarly, brands using seasonal hooks to stimulate WOM such as Halloween or Thanksgiving ignore the subtle commonalities and contrasts these celebrations have across the world.
There was an overall conclusion that this debate needed to be continued in a much more visible way in the industry, with more shared learnings and challenges; we could have stayed in that room all day! As attendees pointed out, companies love toolkits or guidelines they can roll out across markets, but although some degree of consistent narrative is important, this simply won’t work with word of mouth.
On a positive note, there are real opportunities for marketers willing to explore and work with the differences. I for one find them one of the most fascinating and rewarding challenges of working with WOM.
So share your own stories, case studies and questions below, and let’s continue the debate!
I like the new BMW mini, I have driven a few, including the supercharged Cooper S, and I like them. They are quick, well equipped and, with the BMW brand behind it, I assumed they were quite well-built as well.
Then I met a guy who worked for a BMW dealership, he was a mechanic and spent a great deal of time explaining to me in some detail how poorly built the cars actually were and how he was amazed they hadn’t been recalled for various engine problems. Safe to say that damaged my perception of that brand to some degree.
More importantly I share his information with my friends, it spreads, now I have even put it online, and I trust his advice more than most because he is a genuine expert in his field (well, compared to most) and he actually works for the company he is discussing, so he has an intimate knowledge of the product.
Now this is a big problem for brands: brands spend a lot of time and money creating the brand message, now, many brands spend a lot of time monitoring and engaging in online conversation with their communities, advocates and detractors, to understand how their users perceive their brand and discuss it, but here is my problem…
WORD OF MOUTH BEGINS AT HOME
It doesn’t matter how much your community get excited about a product or how many clever WOM, social media and other campaigns you come up with, if you have your own employees telling all their mates not to buy your products then you might as well not bother.
Your employees should be your core advocates, (and no, I don’t just mean your sales teams!!) they should be as, if not more, excited than anyone else about your new products and services, and it doesn’t matter who: from the CEO to the product managers, marketing & PR to the support staff – they should all be using and advocating your services over it’s competition. If they’re not then you have a work to do, if they are actively telling people NOT to buy your products then you have a big problem!
But there is a challenge…
Here it is: Your employees are often the most qualified to hate your products and tell everyone what is wrong with them.
Why?
Because they are the most embedded, they are the people who build, market and sell the products, they know where compromises are made, they know where the competition is strong and they are the first to see problems, as they deal with the angry customers, both online, in store and on the telephone.
Let’s take the example of my friend the BMW mechanic again: every day he goes in to work and he spends his day fixing cars, he gets to know the trends, where problems arise and he gets to see angry customers presented with large bills, he may think he has a solution because he can see that washer X is too weak or the positioning of part Y is off, he is frustrated because no one listens to him, so he thinks the designers are idiots (they’re not, but that’s his perception), his frustration is shared in the form of negative WOM.
So what is the solution?
Well it depends on your company but some general points are outlined below:
Measure internal WOM, don’t spend all your time and effort on monitoring social media, look internally as well, ask your employees (anonymously) and try using very simple surveys like NPS scoring to avoid overwhelming your internal teams with feedback when all you want is a pulse.
Have proper feedback systems in place, let these hidden internal experts, who work on the “front line” spend time with the product managers, tech teams and head office staff, help them to understand the positioning of the product and why it has been made the way it has, get them excited and listen to them, take their feedback and use it!
Give them a reason to use your products, big discounts, free if possible, offer them friends and family discounts and referral schemes for sales (give them a damn good reason to use and promote your products)
Make sure they see happy customers as well as pissed off ones! – Use the intranets, tools like socialcast, or even bulletin boards to share positive feedback and reward those responsible with tangible prizes (don’t just reward your sales teams for good work!)
Involve them in the mission of the company and give them a good, happy working environment! Easier said than done, I know, but a happy employee who understands why they matter is far more likely to be an advocate employee than a detractor employee!
“Yes this is all very nice Tom, but where is my ROI?”
Well that is an easy one actually!
Let’s use BMW as an example again, now BMW has around 98,000 employees, so lets say they spent £500k on an internal WOM campaign to improve their companies internal NPS score, they put in place a number of the bullets above and from it just 0.05% of their employees “sold” an additional car on their behalf by advocating their products and, based on experience, the average price of a new BMW is £20k (that is a guess from looking at bmw.co.uk) then in one year that is £980k of additional sales, just in the cars, not to mention finance, servicing etc. And if you use staff referral and reward schemes or family + friend discounts properly then you can measure a high % of that return very accurately.
But the best bit is that you additionally to the sales you can measure is the increased positive WOM created that spreads through the community and improves brand perception leading to more sales… However this success can be tracked with key KPI’s like internal NPS, which I outlined above. And you can measure pre/post campaign sales uplift.
Anyway that is it!
WOM begins at home, don’t forget to measure it and encourage it because it will make you money…
I am not sure if NPS has been used for internal comms at all, but would be keen to find out, any one have any thoughts or case studies?
Before we get share all the great case studies, keynotes and insight we gleaned from the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) Summit 2010, we have to simply celebrate and say thank you to our team by highlighting the WOMMYResearch Award we won for our #NokiaNav campaign.
Collecting the award alongside Craig Hepburn, Global Head of Digital for Nokia
The WOMMYs are the most prestigious and rigorous awards in the word of mouth industry, and we are delighted that we’ve been acknowledged for “Best strategic thinking to measure the impact/success of WOM”. With #NokiaNav,we focused on understanding, measuring and shifting the sentiment of conversation around Nokia’s accessories and navigation tools. We believe that this approach, which moves beyond reach to the context and meaning of word of mouth, is essential in creating truly effective campaigns.
Here are a few of the guys who really deserve the credit: our Nokia Account and Community team Katie, Simon, Frank and Joel. They share billing equally with the Analyst Team of Joe, Allan and Marzena – who weren’t around for this photo but who did all the incredible data and insight work that made #NokiaNav possible – an awesomely talented bunch.
You can buy WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Works book to see full case studies of all winners; in the meantime get in touch if you’d like to know more about what we did!
The Public Isolation Project is based on a very interesting idea : going 100% digital for 30 days without any contact with the real world. ‘Exploring the anti-social side of social media’, as the organisers put it.
CNN covered the project two days ago, observing Cristin Norine, ‘the lady in the glass house’, as she documented her real-time observations and feelings each day.
It’s obvious that she’ll quickly expand her network, content, and engagement online – it’s the equivalent of a brand dedicating all their time to engaging with consumers solely through social media. However, the lack of depth could be a barrier for *really* developing relationships. The falsity of this purposefully siloed experiment shadows the interactions.
Splitting one’s ‘digital’ and ‘real’ life is something that, as we’ve said many times at 1000heads, we find totally bizarre. People just don’t think of their social media use as this kind of manic, isolated activity, especially as technology interfaces become increasingly invisible, and smart apps bring augmented digital layers to the real world in real time.
Face-to-face interactions still win. We live in physical spaces and social media facilitates communication, connections… but taken in isolation it’s, well, it’s a headline-grabbing experiment, but of no real use to anyone.
‘Social media’ isn’t anti-social, unless you choose to see it – or use it – that way.
It’s five tick boxes, and a bit of text. That’s it.
But it makes a huge statement.
This is the current menu they’re using in Ping Pong (a London based dim sum restaurant with awesome prawn balls, for those not in the know…) Ping Pong’s menus are fairly unique, in that you use them to fill in your order (just put a mark next to the item), and hand the whole thing to your waiter. It’s easy, and it’s simple. And it’s always been that way.
What’s new however, since my last visit at least, is this top section. Five simple tick boxes that put you at the centre of the evening. Now that’s what you call service. Especially for a UK audience with our reserved ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ attitude. Everyone wins. And it takes 10 seconds.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that the most helpful ideas, and those with the most impact, can be achieved without the need for fancy technology, or expensive gizmos. Sometimes all it takes is a little thought and a second print run of menus.
Cost to do it? Minimal.
Cost of not doing it? In today’s climate, who knows…
It’s five tick boxes, and a bit of text. That’s it.
But it makes a huge statement.
This is the current menu they’re using in Ping Pong (a London based dim sum restaurant with awesome prawn balls, for those not in the know…) Ping Pong’s menus are fairly unique, in that you use them to fill in your order (just put a mark next to the item), and hand the whole thing to your waiter. It’s easy, and it’s simple. And it’s always been that way.
What’s new however, since my last visit at least, is this top section. Five simple tick boxes that put you at the centre of the evening. Now that’s what you call service. Especially for a UK audience with our reserved ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ attitude. Everyone wins. And it takes 10 seconds.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that the most helpful ideas, and those with the most impact, can be achieved without the need for fancy technology, or expensive gizmos. Sometimes all it takes is a little thought and a second print run of menus.
Cost to do it? Minimal.
Cost of not doing it? In today’s climate, who knows…
The days are shortening, the air is cooling, and we think we can hear the faint sound of sleigh bells in the distance. This can only mean one thing…
No, not the fact that we’re hungover and hallucinating on a Monday morning. It’s nearly Christmas! Yay. (OK, so lots of you are probably complaining about the whole Christmas-starts-too-early thing, but we say: any excuse for more eating, drinking and general fun-having is fine by us).
In fact, we tend to get generally over-excited and childish around the festive season. So we thought we would kick things off early with a good old-fashioned Christmas pub quiz.
Therefore, we would like to cordially invite our friends and readers to join us on the evening of Thursday2nd December at our offices in Soho (not a pub exactly, but there’ll be plenty of booze) to meet some lovely people, eat some mince pies, and battle it out in teams for some prizes.
If you would like to join us, please email me lauren.severin@1000heads.com, and I’ll send you the details (and a little email nugget of festive cheer).
Direct mail and word of mouth might seem to be at opposite ends of the marketing spectrum: old versus new, broadcast versus conversational, individual versus social, personalised versus personal.
But the workshop I ran yesterday for WOMMA UK on ‘Plugging WOM into DM’ at the Royal Mail’s Mail Media Centre (with Neoco‘s lovely Benn Achilleas), proved just what a hunger there is for marketing disciplines to work together to share insight and develop learnings, rather than stay defensively within their own boundaries.
We worked through the ideas in the above deck with a packed room of direct mail specialists, charities and above the line marketers to investigate how the strengths of direct mail (such as physicality and sensuality; personal focus; nostalgia; design; takeaways) could combine with those of word of mouth (such as social visibility; longevity; authority; ownership; on/offline integration) to improve both disciplines.
Great case studies of campaigns that combined WOM with DM such as Frenzied Waters, #NokiaNav and the Royal British Legion Remembrance Cross appeal reinforced the idea that good conversational strategy is a good conversational strategy, whether the medium is direct mail, digital, experiential or traditional marketing.
Occasionally you stumble upon something and end up nodding in approval as you read. Guardian readers do it all the time. Such was the case for me last Friday when I came across a summary of Steven van Belleghem’s presentation to the Media Research Group Conference in Malta (no, I didn’t know it was on either).
The part of his talk that got the most coverage was his suggestion that we will be saying goodbye to brand managers. Apparently you won’t have to manage a brand anymore because consumers manage a brand. Van Belleghem believes they will be replaced by a new breed – the Conversation Manager (he has a blog and even a book about this too.
I, however, don’t care too much for job titles; I put them alongside fancy chairs and vending machines in terms of their importance in actually getting a job done. However, what really interested me was the notion that companies need to integrate word of mouth into everything that they do.
Anyone that reads our blog frequently or has had the misfortune of meeting me recently will understand how excited we get about integrating word of mouth. With all the data and tools available from mobile and social, using insights from conversations and applying them to each part of your business makes utter sense. As does giving people reasons to talk and share things about your brand.
So Mr van Belleghem is winning quite a lot of love from me.
He gets even more love for pointing out that advertising ‘is the start of a great, impactful conversation, but it must target the right people to spread conversation, with the right motivation about interesting topic(s) for sales to increase’.
As there is more and more buzz about T-Mobile’s latest flashdancymob ad, I wonder if anyone from T-Mobile is going to join in those conversations. So many of the people saying they are fans of the ad must be Orange, O2 or Three customers. Ripe for picking.
If they do, we will be staring straight at a nice piece of integrated word of mouth.
Happy Friday everyone! Are you dressing down? Buying everyone breakfast? Sloping off early for some beers?
We all have Friday rituals, and social media is no exception – take FollowFriday (#ff), the weekly name drop / thank you that has become a popular way to recommend Twitter friends and discover new people to follow.
But if doing a bit of hashtagging doesn’t seem personal enough on this most social of days, why not come along to a MeetFriday (#mf)? We’re big fans of taking the conversation out of the digital world and into face to face (and hand to pint glass), so I and my friend Vincent Rostaing have set up Friday media meet-ups in both Nantes (#mfnantes) and Lyon (#mflyon).
I headed up the Lyon event last week. It was intended to be a relaxed first gathering to discover people’s needs, projects and goals and how to develop the MeetFriday, although we also set two themes to stimulate discussion, one specific (how to put Lyon forward within the web/startup sphere) and one more general (how to collaborate).
More than anything, I was amazed by the hunger for real world connection: 90% of RSVPs came back within 48 hours and we had a really diverse range of attendees, from investors and marketers to executive directors and entrepreneurs.
MeetFriday is proving a great way to build hyperlocal engagement, and the aim is to now grow nationally and get connected with the other hyperlocal communities in France. They are also starting to spread to the UK, and there are mutterings of further global spread.
So come along and join me if you’re in Lyon tonight, and keep an eye out for MeetFridays in your area, or even think about setting one up. Do you think there’s a hunger for a Friday tweetup where you live?
The part of his talk that got the most coverage was his suggestion that we will be saying goodbye to brand managers. Apparently you won’t have to manage a brand anymore because consumers manage a brand. Van Belleghem believes they will be replaced by a new breed – the Conversation Manager (he has 
