More on "WOM as Long Term Strategy"

So far I'm getting quite a bit of positive feedback on yesterday's ClickZ article on WOM as a long-term strategy, but it dawned on me after the piece hit the wire that I failed to include several excellent pieces of input on the subject.  One person I probed for feedback was Bob Gilbreath of Bridge Worldwide, a fast-growing integrated ad shop here in Cincinnati.  Bob cut his traditional and interactive teeth at P&G, where he led some of the company's most progressive (and effective) online initiatives. Most recently, Bob helped launch Mr. Clean's AutoDry product, which was one of the bigger "word of mouth" stories of the year...and a huge success I might add.   Word of mouth marketing, Bob explained, "has already survived the 'fad test', as it's been around for centuries. Cave paintings in France and brothels in Pompeii used word-of-mouth marketing.  It's a natural part of human communication and knowledge sharing - built into our language and genetic code." Other thoughts from Bob:

- World of Mouth and Mass Reach:   "Word-of-mouth is a 'long-term' strategy in that it works best over the long-term to get Mass reach.  Human-to-human communication is sloppy (sometimes incorrect) and inefficient (slow).  But recent advancements in technology and media are allowing WOM to travel faster and more efficiently.  Marketers at large companies understand this are looking for companies that can help them achieve word-of-mouth in the "short-term" because they have the pressure of needing to show immediate success to please the shareholders, retailers, and theater owners who make decisions during the first week of the product launch.

- WOM & The Marketing Mix: "As the Mass Marketing model (nail TV/Print/coupons and call it a day) breaks down, large companies will have to embrace doing about 50 small things really well.  They will be challenged to accomplish 50 pieces of work with fewer people and fewer dollars.  I think word-of-mouth marketing will be one of those 50 things that must be done.  The challenge for word-of-mouth agencies is to create products/services/systems that make it easy for Marketers to add this to their list in a turnkey way."

- Managing Leveraging Consumer-Generated Media: "The biggest issue (as you and I have experienced from the client side) is that it’s really hard to get anything actually done.  There’s legal, regulatory, R&D, budget cuts, multiple levels of management signoff, etc.  This is a main reason why ABMs and BMs don’t experiment that much – because of the pain involved in getting stuff through the bureaucracy.  It takes an iron will to push new stuff through the system. So the solution is to make is easier for them – THAT is where I see Consumer Generated Media has having a huge role.  You can escape the long hours and internal bureaucracy by letting the market do the marketing for you!!  Speaks to open source movements, consumer in control and other buzzable insights…

 

Thanks, Bob.  Keep the good wisdom coming!

Comments

[Edward Cotton]

All great stuff if you have something worth talking about. The great stories depicted in cave paintings and brothels have talk value. Many companies are not fortunate enough to have P&G's level of innovation, but still want word of mouth. They might be asking for too much.

[Matt Galloway]

As I recently wrote about Troy Young's presentaion at WOMMA I was thinking about this. Troy says that the internet made time irrelovant but now we need to get back to thinking about time. He and his team at Organic stage online "events" that are designed to get a lot of voices in concert about the same thing at the same time. It's easy to understand how this could be very powerful. Thinks about election day, for example (not his example BTW).

I think the most benefit in WOMM lies in a long-term, culture bending approach - but there certainly are valid, ethical short term approaches.

As this WOMM things evolves, we are learning that there is an enourmous landscape and no silver bullets. Certain elements - remarkable product, ethical practice - are constant, while others - long term v. short term - are limited only by imagination.

-Matt