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April 07, 2005
Creating sustainable word of mouth
Long-term, sustainable word of mouth that translates into recognizable revenue growth results when organizations focus on giving their evangelists reasons to spread their individual doctrines of emotional connection or ownership.
The big question before the word of mouth industry, if one can call it that, is: Do campaigns deliberately designed to be "viral" inspire long-term loyalty?
A campaign-driven strategy to generate word of mouth often results in vacuous efforts like Subservient Chicken or the new effort from BMW Mini USA, the Counter Counterfeit Commission.
Mini USA's "Commission" has a pinch of entertainment value, and perhaps a dash of product education, but ultimately -- like a human appendix -- it serves no purpose. One-off, throwaway campaigns do not inspire loyalty. Choirs do.
Choirs get sitting presidents re-elected. Choirs keep airlines profitable every year for 31 years in a row. Choirs help you with the hard work.
Mini USA is not involving its existing choir (myself included) in any meaningful way other than asking us and anyone else in the world to click on the send-to-a-friend button.
Long-term, sustainable word of mouth and its resultant revenues arrive when your organization continues to innovate its cause to change the world, whatever that world looks like. Campaigns are the filter through which advertising agencies see the world.
Campaigns like the Counter Counterfeit Commission seem more suited for marketing judges than customers.
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Back in grad school, my advisor would constantly badger me about "conceptual slippage." She would say you need to move cleanly and clearly between theory, concept and indicator. I think the word-of-mouth marketing community may be suffering from some of this slippage right now. I think we should try to keep WOM conceptually separate from buzz. (WOMMA would probably disagree). It seems to me that campaigns focusing on buzz, as a primary objective - like Subservient Chicken or the Counter Counterfeit Commission - almost inevitably miss the boat when it comes to nurturing long-term relationships with customers and empowering loyal supporters with tools to personalize and market a brand message. That to me is core of WOM. I can almost see the venn diagram ;-) Maybe buzz is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for WOM marketing to exist. And buzz can probably exist without genuine personal endorsement and ongoing involvement.
Josh, I love the term "conceptual slippage." It's terrific.
I think a lot of agencies and companies view buzz as the cause, not the effect.
