PHD Perspectives: Word-of-Mouse is Word-of-Mouth - Chris McLeod - MediaBizBloggers

While looking through a recent issue of Ad Age that highlighted America's hottest brands I started to notice a common theme. A number of brands profiled credited their success to "word-of-mouth." And we're not talking about the sexy technologically-advanced-buzz -metric-intensive-sophisticated targeting type of word-of-mouth. We are talking the old school version, an actual person physically interacting with another person and telling them about a brand's offering. In fact, one advertiser even said that it was BECAUSE of the success of its word-of-mouth campaign that they became comfortable enough to go into traditional media, specifically TV.

Huh?

I thought using all the great new digital tools that Web 2.0 has spawned for word-of-mouth was considered standard practice now in this age of technology. What is this stuff about resting your hopes on archaic physical person-to-person contact? It seems we are in Superman's Bizarro world where everything is backwards. Next, we're going to hear that consumers are the ones telling brands what products they want, how those products should be marketed to them, and what price they are willing to pay for them.

Wait, that's EXACTLY where we are.

Here's what's cool about Word-of-Mouth (and incidentally what's cool about Social Media): we as marketers can pontificate and flex our marketing muscles all day about this "new" model of marketing where technology expands our thinking and defines new ground. We can write articles, white papers, and give our "expert" opinions about the future of this constantly growing and evolving entity that has even the best CMOs going to their 12 year old kids to tell them what's the latest and greatest in technology.

But here's the kicker: this stuff ain't new.

It's a beautiful thing to see this organism of Marketing (yes, I believe it's alive) take us "back" to basic modes of communication to remind us that with all the bells and whistles of technology, it is, was, and always will be about people simply telling each other about something they think is worth sharing. And even when they first hear about it from some guy on the street in a banana suit, if your product offers a real benefit, it will resonate with people.

Companies that achieve Marketing success often attribute it to 1) having a product that people find to be interesting/useful, and 2) people then being so inspired to share information about that product with others. It's really that simple. The technology behind HOW people share that information is important, but it's not the root of success.

So don't get caught in the weeds making your head hurt with a headache "this big" (shout out to the old school Excedrin commercial) trying to figure out where the blue wire connects to the red one in your server so that you can have the coolest blog/video/augmented reality Web destination for consumers. Trying to get a hot-shot company to create an algorithm that will predict the next 20 years of Marketing in the age of new technology will leave you chasing the tail of a dog you already know. Well, you know what I mean.

Every new technology used in Marketing is just another way to do what consumers have always done: tell somebody about your cool (or not-so-cool) product.

Bolt Bus launched in March 2007 with some PR efforts and street teams to spread the news of its offering of bus travel that's affordable. What made people willing to tell others about it? Leather seats, great legroom, free WiFi, electrical outlets, and seats for $1. This made the word catch like wild-fire among young professional travelers and now they have over 2 million riders in less than 2 years. No complex integrated marketing communications plan, no sexy TV spot, no algorithms, just people on the street telling other people about the bus. Duh.

So remember, the "how" that is technology will always be changing, but the "what" that drives people to communicate will always remain the same. Quite simply, people like to talk - and if your product is worth talking about, they'll tell somebody (even when they learned about your product from, dare I say, a flyer on the street). Long live Word-of-Mouth…the original one.

Chris McLeod, Omnicom MBA Resident at PHD Media, a Division of Omnicom. You can follow Chris @more2learn

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