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WOMBAT Conference Takeaways, Day 1

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association Basic Training conference (affectionately known as WOMBAT 2) has lots of great content. Here are my three favorites, plus an interesting Diet Coke/Mentos moment...

Ed Keller of Keller-Fay group presented data from his new TalkTrack product, which surveys consumers about their offline word-of-mouth behaviors. He wrapped up with a list of the 10 most positively buzzed about brands, one of which was Wal-Mart. Cymfony's analysis of consumer-generated media discussion about Wal-Mart will appear in the July issue of Media Magazine. Ed's data and our analysis agreed that there is a lot less "Wal-Mart bashing" going on than one might expect.

I moderated a panel session titled "Practical Word of Mouth: 43 Word of Mouth Ideas You Can Implement Tomorrow." They were all great, but Allison Gower of qtags showed how to "Make it easy for people to find you and tell people about you." For a non-profit organization's annual fundraising dinner, she had created a small business card holder, but instead of business cards, it contained cards with information about the organization, its mission, programs, etc. So every attendee could put this in their purse or briefcase and when they told friends about the group, could hand them one of the cards.

Scott Wilder of Intuit recommended that companies "close the loop with customers, to let them know you heard and acted on their suggestions." He pointed to the section of QuickBooks Groups called "Better Because of You." The site lists 64 changes the company has made to QuickBooks 2006 based on user suggestions. Because of ideas like this, Intuit continues to be my "poster child" for the company that is most effectively implementing an Influence 2.0 strategy that relies less on pushing messages at people, instead engaging customers in a dialogue.

The interesting moment came at the end of the day when Stuart Sheldon, director of brand activation for Coca-Cola North America, was asked why Diet Coke hasn't picked up on all the buzz surrounding the viral videos of the Diet Coke/Mentos experiments. Clearly stating he was giving his own personal view, not an official Coca-Cola company statement, his first response was, "We like to think people drink our product." He went on to say that it didn't fit Diet Coke's sophisticated brand personality, the "Hollywood of soft drinks," while it did fit Mentos' "tongue-in-cheek" image.

Scott makes a good point: one key criterion a brand should use to evaluate participation in online buzz is whether it is relevant to a brand's essence, core values, and unique selling proposition. If it is, whether positive or negative buzz, the brand should be involved; when it isn't, it is optional to get involved.

On the other hand, Hollywood has a sense of humor, too, so even a sophisticated brand should be able to have a little fun once in a while IMHO....

Posted by Jim Nail on June 21, 2006 at 07:55 AM | Email this post Permalink

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Comments

Jim, Thanks for the wrap-up post. I agree with your view on Diet Coke perhaps limiting the frameworks for word-of-mouth by excluding creative concepts and especially those that focus on humor. There are -- IMHO -- only two core ways to amplify buzz: 1. Focus on the brand/product/service. 2. Focus on a creative concept. This perspective is also reinforced in finding from our study of advertisers who are considering and using WOM.

Todd Tweedy
BoldMouth

Posted by: Todd Tweedy | Jun 21, 2006 10:41:14 AM

Jim,

Liked the post, Scott Wilder and Intuit are also one of my favorite companies to point to about the use of blogging, forums and other social media tools. I think their success comes from their genesis for the use of social media tools, customer service rather than PR or Marketing.

I've long thought that product managers and customer service people will get the most from blogging. And really write some of the most interesting company blogs because of why those professionals blog. What do you think?

Posted by: John Cass | Jun 30, 2006 1:32:04 PM

John,
I couldn't agree more. My definition of marketing is "discovering and satisfying consumer wants, needs and motivations". Under this broad definition, customer service is part of marketing. It has always amazed me how much marketers will spend to do massive research studies, when they could just go and spend a day in the call center and probably learn as much. At Forrester, my colleage Elana Anderson wrote a great piece a couple of years ago titled "Why Marketing Should Own the Contact Center".
I also completely agree with you point about product managers making the best bloggers. They are the ones wrestling with the questions of which features or new products to come up with, so their posts reflect the real world trade-offs they are trying to make and thus are authentic. Marketers just can help putting a spin on the same issues that try to make it sound like the company knows everything and has the perfect plan, thus it comes off as contrived.

Posted by: Jim Nail | Jul 7, 2006 9:19:35 AM

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