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Blog Bits - Week of October 31st

Did you know that almost ½ of all online marketers will engage in some form of word of mouth marketing this year and next year a majority of digital marketers will conduct such efforts?  Church of the Customer Blog shows some data from a new report by eMarketer and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).   The report lists the “top ten reasons why word of mouth marketing is gaining momentum.”  Here are a few: 

1) The consumer is gaining control
3) Empowered consumers are not just negative, they are fighting back
4) There is a marked increase in online advertising
8) New tools can now track and measure online word of mouth
9) Online word of mouth marketing campaigns have a long shelf life

Copies are free to members of WOMMA

How are you spending your Ad and PR Budgets? PR machines points to a post by Passionate that gives some excellent tips on the “Old Way vs. New Way.”  Some of these include:

Old Way – Hire a creative, award winning advertising designer
New Way – Hire a creative, user focused product designer

Old Way – Focus Groups
New Way – Field trips for employees (take them where the real customers are doing work)

Old Way – Ads that talk about how you’re better than the competition
New Way – Articles that talk about what you’ve learned from the competition

Market Sentinel provides some insight on a recent article in the New York Times (requires free registration) that profiles how Wal-Mart has taken on their detractors with a pro-active PR campaign, run by a number of ex political campaigners.  “The PR campaign emphasizes the Wal-Mart positives (good value, local employment) and looks to off-set a campaign of detraction from pressure groups like Wal-Mart Watch, run in part by trade unions who oppose the company’s employment practices and who cannot get recognition from the company.”

Some Key quotes from the article that Market Sentinel has listed:

A confidential 2004 report prepared by McKinsey & Company for Wal-Mart, and made public by Wal-Mart Watch, found that 2 percent to 8 percent of Wal-Mart consumers surveyed have ceased shopping at the chain because of “negative press they have heard.”

Once a darling of Wall Street, Wal-Mart’s stock price has fallen 27 percent since 2000, when H. Lee Scott Jr. became chief executive, a drop that executives have said reflects, in part, investors’ anxieties about the company’s image. Sales growth at stores open for more than a year has slowed to an average of 3.5 percent a month this year, compared with 6.3 percent at Target.

To keep up with its critics, Wal-Mart “has to run a campaign,” said Robert McAdam, a former political strategist at the Tobacco Institute who now oversees Wal-Mart’s corporate communications. “It’s simply nonsense for us to let some of these attacks go without a response.”

Posted by Jeri Weaver on November 4, 2005 at 09:55 AM | Email this post Permalink

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