This is the first in a series of dispatches from the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association conference in San Francisco. (Full disclosure: I’m a co-founder and board member of WOMMA, so anything I write here has a wee bit of positive bias.) After introductory comments by the WOMA CEO Andy Sernovitz and new WOMMA Chairman Ed Keller (of the Keller-Fay Group), Ketchum’s Paul Rand and Gary Stein nicely set the pace for the morning with content-rich talks on “What is Word of Mouth Marketing” and “The Ten Commandments of WOM.” Paul, a newly elected WOMMA board member, nicely articulated key definitions and categories around WOM, especially in the context of “crossing the line.” I found this part particularly helpful as I think there’s a great deal of confusion among marketers about what actually constitutes inappropriate practices. He also dropped some very compelling quotables from the likes of Datamonitor and Gary Ruskin, Executive Director of Consumer Alert, including the following from Ruskin: “I worry about the basic commercialization of human relations, where friends treat one another as advertising pawns, undercutting social trust…” While Rand nicely articulated key WOMMA “Vision” principles around consumer empowerment, listening, and “two-way” dialogue, the talk was less prescriptive around the “how to” in this area,which probably was intentional. I expect we’ll hear more of that later. Talk Value: Four and a Half Megaphones.
Baby WOMStein: Gary Stein, who I think it’s one of the best (and most enthusiastic) thinkers in the WOM space, and who I worked with going as far back to days at P&G, delivered a superb presention. He set the stage with a wonderful anecdote about how CostCo, the source of most of the food lavished on his family by relatives after the birth of his son Eliot Pico, benefits from evangelism and word-of-mouth. CostCo, he explained, is a brand that generated great “talk value” because it takes employee advocacy and empowerment seriously, talked without fluff or fanfare with consumers, and partners well with customers. He proceeded to show a series of BlogPulse charts suggesting that CostCo is equal to Karl Rove in online conversation, which certain got his point across. As for his actual “commandments” the ones that resonated most with me (or than Commandment #8: “Measure It”) was #2 (“Sweateth the Small Stuff”) and #9 (“Drip with Ethics”). Overall, a great way to set the stage. Deep and meaningful, but easy to remember. Talk Value: Five Megaphones.
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