Social Marketing: Past is Prologue, Part 2 - Ed Keller

On May 22 Brad Fay39s and my new book THE FACETOFACE BOOK Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace will be published You can download a free excerpt from the book here or find it online hereAs part of our research we looked at the history of word of mouth and social influence and were reminded that the past is indeed prologue My first blog on this topic reviewed the seminal work of Columbia Professors Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz amp8211 Personal Influence Here I discuss the origins of word of mouth advertising and its relevance to today The Advent of WordofMouth AdvertisingAs far as we have been able to determine the phrase quotWordofMouth Advertisingquot was coined by Ernest Dichter who in 1966 published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled quotHow WordofMouth Advertising WorksquotDichter was a psychologist by training His firm focused on consumer behavior and the motivations that drive them including the role of persuasion in advertising He is generally considered to be quotthe father of motivational researchquot and the first to coin the term quotfocus groupquot a technique that helped him understand quotwhyquot why people were motivated to buy or do or think something His work helped advertisers to shift their focus from straightforward product information and statistics to image and persuasionDichter brought this perspective to his HBR article which began with the observation that whenever his firm would ask consumers quotwhat made you buy this brand or particular productquot the answer invariably came back a friend expert or relative who told me about it To Dichter this prompted the important question quotWhy in a time of increasing advertising volume does WordofMouth recommendation loom so highquotTo provide answers Dichterlaunched a large scale research project to investigate the ways in which wordofmouth recommendations affect advertising and the flip side amp8211 the ways advertising affects wordofmouth Dichter39s goal was to help advertisers refine their techniques such that they could embrace word of mouth and use it to their advantage rather than seeing it as a force that was at odds with their advertisingIn many regards it was a precursor to the desire many marketers have today to integrate three major communications assets amp8211 paid owned and earned media Rather than treating them as independent silos or worse forces that work in opposition to each other Dichter sought to understand how these assets should work togetherHow Can Advertisers Earn WordofMouthDichter provided concrete ideas to advertisers about ways to quotearnquot word of mouth and thereby earn a bigger return on their investment in quotpaidquot media Although Dichter39s advice was given almost 50 years ago many of his ideas are similar to the guiding principles that social media and word of mouth practitioners deploy today Some of these include1 Advertisers should provide quotproof of friendshipquot to the consumer in order to separate themselves from their role as quotsales channelquot and become a trusted friend of the consumer Examples include providing small but thoughtful quotgift packagesquot to say thanks helping your customer to feel that they are being initiated into an 39exclusive39 group by using your product or quotestablish audience kinshipquot through the messages and style of your advertising to illustrate that you have things in common with the customers and truly understand them2 Trace quotthe company mythquot amp8211 ie convey the back story of the product39s founding or the way early consumers used it amp8211 in order to personalize the product and create authenticity3 Provide quotcustomer testimonialsquot to simulate word of mouth which if done properly will allow the viewers or readers to believe that the third party endorser is truly speaking spontaneously and truthfully and not as a quothired handquot4 Design the advertising itself to provoke stimulate or produce word of mouthDichter39s underlying messages to the advertising community stands the test of time and is as relevant today as it was a half century agoamp183 Advertising cannot sell against personal influenceamp183 Advertising must change from its traditional role of quota salesman who tries to get rid of merchandisequot to a new role of quotadvertiser as that of a friend who recommends a tried and trusted productquotamp183 Advertisers should do so by understanding the steps that make persontoperson interaction powerful and modify mass media approaches accordingly andamp183 There is a readymade market of quotinfluencers experts or aficionadosquot that can be reached and in turn influenced by advertising in the right media and with the appropriate creative approachThe Golden Age of Advertising or a Missed OpportunityDichter together with Katz and Lazarsfeld whom I wrote about previously and leading thinkers at that time were for example Everett Rogers were not the only ones to extol the importance of word of mouth and influencers during these quotearly yearsquot but they were the leading lights and their insights are enduring The stage was set and advertisers were challenged to act and behave differently in order to maximize the impact of their marketing efforts by embracing rather than ignoring the power of personal influence and word of mouth in the buying processSadly this didn39t happen Instead marketing was overtaken by the era of the quotMad Menquot It was an era during which the great ad man David Ogilvy felt it necessary to say to his colleagues quotThe consumer isn39t a moron she39s your wifequot His quote reminds us that it was a male dominated business and that the consumer certainly wasn39t at the center Advertising executives were enamored with their own brilliant creativity and their ability to persuade the mass market through the power of their ideas delivered primarily through TV advertising It was a topdown quotfather knows bestquot world despite the reality that decisions then as now were being made quothorizontally and sociallyquotMany call this time period quotthe Golden Age of Advertisingquot and if you were in the ad business it undoubtedly was We would call it a three decades long quotmissed opportunityquot for Madison Avenue39s clients During those years the power of word of mouth advertising influencer marketing and the like not only failed to take hold it began to recede from the marketer39s consciousness There was relatively little focus throughout the rest of the 6039s right up through the late 199039sIn my next and last post on the history of word of mouth I39ll pick things up in the late 1990s with the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto and it39s exhortation that quotmarkets are conversationsquotEd 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 His new book The FacetoFace Book is coming out in May 2012 You can follow Ed Keller on Twitter Facebook and Google or contact him directly at ekellerkellerfaycomRead all Edamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at WOM MattersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Social Marketing: Past is Prologue, Part 2 - Ed Keller

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