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January 23, 2006
1st Annual WOMMY Awards
I'm back from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training conference in Orlando, where I presented a two-hour workshop on Creating Customer Evangelists. This was WOMMA's largest conference yet. About 450 attendees total.
Lots of blogging about the conference can be found here, here, here, here and here.
Since it's awards season, I thought it fitting to deliver my first annual WOMMY Awards (pronounced WHOA-ME), commemorating the highlights of the conference. The envelopes, please!
Best One-Liner in a Panel Presentation:
Jamie Tedford, Arnold Worldwide. He explained that word of mouth marketing (WOMM) is not a conquest tool, but a loyalty trigger, by saying "WOMM is for lovers."
Best Use of Profanity:
Bob Garfield, ad critic for Advertising Age magazine. During his rollicking keynote presentation, he referred to the change and confusion in the media industry today as a "clusterf*ck."
Best Rookie Performance:
Scott Ginsberg, That Guy with the Nametag. Scott is 25 and known for wearing a nametag every day for the last 5 years. His presentation was spirited, funny, filled with clear ideas, and made good use of PowerPoint. A pleasant surprise! No, Scott, I'm not saying nice things about you because you said I looked 20 years younger in person :)
Best Truism:
Zane Safrit, Conference Calls Unlimited. During his panel session, he said: "Word of mouth creates a sustainable business."
Best Impersonation of a Star Wars Character:
Fred Reichheld, author of "The Ultimate Question." While Fred is not quite as old as Yoda (close!), he closed his keynote with his faced morphed with a picture of Yoda holding a light saber that spelled LOYALTY. Fred, I would love to post that pict.
Best Rumor:
That BzzAgent is selling its agents' contact information to marketing firms. I asked BzzAgent's chief beekeeper Dave Balter about it. He said it's not true and may be the byproduct of having to outsource the creative execution of campaigns to the advertising agencies of his clients. With 120,000 BzzAgents, his ability to provide enough campaigns to agents who want to participate is constrained by his lack of resources. I guess that's where $14 million will help.
Best Conference Attire:
John Moore, the Marketing Medic from Brand Autopsy.
Technorati tags: WOMMA, WOMBAT
Other blogs that reference 1st Annual WOMMY Awards:
» i learned it by watching you! from frank.
More notes, more insight! The next WOMMA session talked about Corporate Philosophy and Word of Mouth ... or, how the hell did you get this going in your company? The great Jackie Huba will tell you how to rock this [Read More]
» i learned it by watching you! from frank.
More notes, more insight! The next WOMMA session talked about Corporate Philosophy and Word of Mouth ... or, how the hell did you get this going in your company? The great Jackie Huba will tell you how to rock this [Read More]
And another WOMMY goes to . . .
Jackie Huba, for delivering a lunch presentation that was so great that we literally couldn't get the attendees to leave the room after an hour and a half. They were enthralled, engaged, and maybe hypnotized.
Thanks, Jackie!
I just want to echo Andy's praise. The clarity, elegance, practical focus, and lack of self-promotion in Jackie's session was great. While I walked in with a lot of experiential knowledge around "Tenets of Customer Evangelism" 1, 3, and 4, I walked out with a much better theoretical grasp of it, along with some great and practical ideas around Tenets 2, 5, and 6.
And of course, if you're curious as to what these Tenets are, explore this site! (How's that for some authentic and applied WOM?)
