All Media Are Social: The Unique Roles of TV, Print and Online in Driving Word of Mouth - Ed Keller - MediaBizBloggers

If you want your brand to quotgo viralquot Twitter and Facebook are the ways to go Right Well maybe But those are only two options among numerous media strategies you can employA new paper authored by my business partner Brad Fay and Graeme Hutton of Universal McCann reveals new empirical evidence of how media and advertising drive word of mouth Presented last month at the Advertising Research Foundation39s Audience Measurement 50 conference the paper revealed a strong linkage between advertising expenditures and word of mouth It also found that the major mediaamp8212TV print and onlineamp8212all provide unique assets to marketers seeking to inspire and shape word of mouth about their brands Both the Hutton and Fay analyses leveraged my firm39s TalkTrackamp174 syndicated study of word of mouth both offline and online for major brands in the USWorking with a case study from a UM client Hutton found that advertising has a large and measurable impact on word of mouth levels whether the advertising was on TV in print or online He also found that word of mouth from a brand can be impacted by the advertising of competitive brandsamp8212suggesting that brands not advertising effectively can find themselves quotout of the conversationquot when competitors doFay39s analysis uncovered the unique strengths of the major media in generating word of mouth specificallyamp183 Print media both magazines and newspapers deliver audiences composed of the largest proportions of consumer influencersamp8212the segment we call the Conversation Catalystsamp8482 among the major media These influencers who are more prolific and more persuasive than other consumers deliver up to four times the social value of noninfluencers according to a separate study we did for Conde Nastamp183 Television is responsible for generating more word of mouth about advertiser brands than any other medium Fully 18 of all conversations about brands involve somebody specifically quoting something they say on television usually in a commercial but sometimes something in a program This dovetails with a new study we39ve done with NBC Universal that shows that television stands out especially for generating the quotsparkquot for a conversation either as the commercial is airing or sometime lateramp183 The Internet is the fastest growing driver of word of mouth and it is the most likely of any medium to lead to the passing on of brand advice from one consumer to another to another and so on In other words it is the most viral medium In a recent study we did for Yahoo we found that while about 7 of all word of mouth actually occurs on the internet now 16 of all conversationsamp8212online or offlineamp8212involve somebody quoting content about brands found onlineThe idea of quotsocial mediaquot feels new with so much excitement being generated today by Facebook Twitter and a host of other online tools But advertisers of all kinds should remember what we should always have knownamp8212that media and advertising work best when they stimulate conversationWe first learned this a half century ago from Columbia University professors Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld Coauthors of one of the classic studies in communications theory they had it exactly right about advertising quotMedia have only 39limited effects39 in the process of mass persuasionamp8230 Messages are filtered through social networks and vetted in the light of group normsquot Said another way quotword of mouthquot is what makes advertising work bestTheir argument was that mass advertising primarily works by stimulating conversations between opinion leaders and other consumers In today39s parlance they were saying that all media are quotsocial mediaquot and that advertisers should focus on seeding messages to motivate the already converted rather than to directly persuadeKatz and Lazarsfeld had a simple piece of advice for advertisers quotIdentify the points at which media enter the conversationquot Fifty years later we39re learning how to do thatFor readers interested in learning more about WOM and media there is a free webinar hosted by my partner Brad Fay on July 20 2010 For more information and to register go to httpkellerfaycompageid321 Ed Keller CEO of the Keller Fay Group has been called quotone of the most recognized names in word of mouthquot The publication of Keller39s book The Influentials has been called the quotseminal moment in the development of word of mouthquot Ed can be contacted at ekellerkellerfaycomRead all Edamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Ed Keller MediaBizBloggersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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All Media Are Social: The Unique Roles of TV, Print and Online in Driving Word of Mouth - Ed Keller - MediaBizBloggers

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