MarketerBlog

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Disclosure

Adrants has a post today which covers a recent debate among marketing types about the validity of P&G’s Vocalpoint. Vocalpoint provides buzz marketing services for P&G and others, but has raised some eyebrows for lack of disclosure among its buzz-agent moms. Apparently the brand advocates aren’t required to be forthcoming about the fact that they’re being paid to promote the product. 

 
“While test market pilots proved Procter & Gamble's word of mouth arm, Vocalpoint, is a success and increases sales, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and Gary Ruskin's Commercial Alert are not pleased with Vocalpoint's army of 600,000 moms who spread buzz about P&G products and others because Vocalpoint does not require its "connectors" to disclose who they work for, a key tenet in the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Code of Ethics.”

 
I have to say that the debate about these “new issues” cracks me up. Word of Mouth marketing is as old as the hills, and became widespread due to brands like Amway, Avon,  and MCI’s Friends & Family. The difference now is that digital WOM has enabled marketers to reach more people cheaper, faster.

The Adrants post (and the WOMMA debate) misses a few key points. This is a somewhat self-governing situation. To begin with, there’s a difference between friends and acquaintances. If someone is a real friend you’re likely to know whether they’re up to something like this (e.g. shilling products). If someone is an acquaintance, adult judgment would suggest a certain amount of discretion in buying the pitch. That said, I agree with the WOMMA and others that disclosure is critical for these marketing campaigns.

However the real question is why marketers are pursuing this instead of cultivating true brand advocates? The blogs and social networking tools have sparked thousands of conversations among millions of people. Somewhere there are conversations about any given product, service, brand or issue. Further, there are centers of gravity where a certain amount of critical mass exists on any topic, either due to volume, credibility or some combination of the two. Marketers should seek out these “centers of gravity” and find ways to join the conversation, instead of creating artificial ones.

Apple is just one example of a brand that has successfully cultivated and co-opted brand advocates. There’s an article in today’s New York Times about the phenomenal success of the Apple stores. Apple opened a store on Fifth Avenue  this week. They had 5,000 applicants for 300 positions. The positions are salaried, not commissioned and since the store is open 24x7 that means somebody gets the graveyard shift. Now that’s brand enthusiasm. 

Marketers should stop taking shortcuts and being penny wise and brand-equity foolish. Brand managers need to understand that creating a successful WOM marketing program is not like making a media buy. It means cultivating relationships with valued customers and using those to create more valued customers. Maybe CMO’s should turn to their CRM and Customer Relations experts, rather than their advertising and PR gurus to create their WOM programs. 

 

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Advertising, CGM, Marketing, Vocalpoint, Web 2.0, Word of Mouth, WOMMA

Jack Trout: That Dog Don’t Hunt

I lived in the South for a brief period about a decade ago. There were several charming expressions I learned during my tenure there. I still maintain they are among the most eloquent elements of our national heritage. One of my favorites is: “that dog don’t hunt” and its wonderful corollary: “if you can’t hunt with the big dogs, don’t get off the porch”. 

Well, one of the quote-unquote “big dogs” got off the porch this week, and he should have stayed right where he was.  Acclaimed advertising guru Jack Trout has a column in Forbes this week decrying the uselessness of digital word-of-mouth marketing. His rationale? You can’t control it. His solution? Advertising of course. 

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. Mr. Trout is correct. In the new world order advertisers have lost control of brands. He’s also correct that the opinions of the blogosphere are unpredictable and that it’s difficult to base a sales forecast on its whims and trends. I’ll grant him that. But with all due respect, he’s missing the point. 

Consumers are exhausted with the loud-mouthed blasts of mass media advertising. They’re immune to the 3,000-odd marketing messages they receive each day. So they’re taking matters into their own hands: they’re opting out. Between on-demand entertainment, do-not-call lists and spam filters, consumers are successfully blocking more and more marketing output. 

Rather than bury their heads in the sand and remain dependent on increasingly inefficient old-school tools, marketers are becoming even more creative and trying new ideas. Viral marketing, podcasts, and corporate blogging are just a few ways marketers are engaging in conversations with customers and prospects. More will emerge in the future. 

What Mr. Trout and his brethren seem to forget is that, at the end of the day, marketing and sales is about building relationships. That used to mean the one-to-one relationship your grandmother had with her neighborhood grocer. In the era of social networking and Web 2.0 we have the capability to build relationships digitally, across cities and around the globe. If anything Mr. Trout and his minions should welcome this shift – it amplifies and extends brands in ways that weren’t possible ten years ago and will become more effective and efficient marketing strategies. 

The film “Good Night and Good Luck” is a sonnet to the era of responsible journalism. The characters in that movie angst about the impacts of their editorial choices on the show’s sponsor. Ultimately they make the decision to pursue the higher standards of journalism, despite the risks to the show’s advertising budget. No doubt Mr. Trout would have regarded that as the golden age of advertising. Would he have acted with as much grace and forethought? 

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Jack Trout, Viral Marketing, Web2.0, Word of Mouth Marketing

Viral Fruitcakes: Clever Promotion Does Not Equal Great Word-of-Mouth

I have to come clean. While this blog is predominantly about the virtues of authentic relationships with customers and ways to cultivate those relationships, I have, in the past, been guilty of crass mass marketing. So I can appreciate a good consumer promotion as well as the next marketing flack. But as a recent initiate into the Web 2.0 blogger ranks, I feel compelled to comment. 

Today’s Media Post (registration required) has an article about Cold Stone Creamery’s “Fruitcake Freedom” campaign last December. The intention was to promote ice cream sales during what’s typically an off season. During the promotion consumers were encouraged to "turn in" their unwanted fruitcakes in exchange for a discount on an ice cream cake. The campaign was stimulated via collateral materials sent to franchisees.   

Did it work? A quick search yields a handful of links to news articles and even fewer blog posts. I don’t know what sales results were for the period, but if the intention was to increase customer loyalty this campaign appeared to miss the mark. A quote from the company spokesperson, Kevin Donnellan reveals the flaw in their strategy. 

"I think word-of-mouth has immense potential for increasing loyalty," says Donnellan. "In the world we live in, we're inundated with ad messages and consumers are looking to build an intimate relationship with brands. I think that comes from buzz."

He got it half right. We are inundated with marketing messages. But consumers don’t want to build an intimate relationship with brands. We want to discover brands that deliver on, or better yet, exceed our expectations. And we want to interact with them on our own terms. 

At the holiday season there are usually more than enough jokes going around about things to do with fruitcakes. If Cold Stone Creamery really wanted to create some “buzz” they would have tapped into those conversations and done things like having a video contest for ways to get rid of fruitcakes. You can see the Letterman-esque images now. And you can be that something clever would have gone viral. 

PR folks often confuse buzz with genuine interest. Consumer Generated Media gives marketers the opportunity to go behind the curtain, to interact directly with customers, and to engage their passions and interests. 

Spring is coming. Maybe Cold Stone Creamery will create a campaign which is really “buzz worthy”.

 
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Viral Marketing, Marketing, Blogs, Buzz Marketing, Cold Stone Creamery