October
Stamats’ Conference Blogging VII: Future Web, Word of Mouth
Time for a little late night blogging. I just got done watching Saw on Showtime, so I figured it would be a great time to delve into higher ed marketing!
Future Web
Today’s keynote speaker was Nick Fink, founder of Digital Web Magazine, and Director of User Experience for new media company Blue Flavor. Nick seemed like a really nice guy. He got on my good side right off the bat by looking uncomfortable about using the term “Web 2.0″ and then giving us a little bit of real history on the word, conceding that it didn’t really mean anything.
His talk on next generation web was not exactly a futurists drama of what the next fifty years will bring. It was mostly a practical exploration of how today’s leading-edge media will evolve and become more mainstream. He discussed the continuing decentralization of media power (a kind of “the meek shall inherit the earth” sort of idea), and he encouraged us to find a “guru” on a subject and start staking out a niche right now through blogging or participation in online communities. To name a few subjects he touched on: access-anywhere gps-enabled mobile devices, self-publishing moving to media outside of just web, marketing and business turning more and more to people-centric public faces that encourage consumer involvement in the brand, various standards allowing information to be mined and shared through feeds and networks, and non-traditional marketing becoming more prominent.
He gave this very vivid example: the subject of Yahoo acquiring Flickr came up and he mentioned how Yahoo had linked their mapping API with Flickr to allow geo-tagging of images. He got this thoughtful, excited expression and said “imagine going to a restaurant and, using a mobile device, being able to get a detailed map with pictures of any location along the way as well as message the restaurants owner.” To add to that, you could pull up a menu, make a reservation, or just old-fashioned call them. I’m ready to be there—I want that world that’s always on, “tagged and tracked and ambient and pervasive and ubiquitous and geolocative… Jesus, I love those words…” Makes me giddy.
Word of Mouth Marketing
Peter Waldheim is a very engaging speaker. I feel like I could’ve listened to his stories of action in the civil rights movement and rubbing elbows with foreign dignitaries at posh Washington dinner parties for most of the day. An older man with an acerbic, slightly self-ingratiating wit, he gave us a vibrant introduction to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and the concept of Word of Mouth Marketing.
“Word of mouth,” he said, “is powerful not because it’s new but because it’s old.” Word of mouth marketing, often introduced as this exciting new thing, he argues is easily older than the bible “where the only command given more than ‘go forth and multiply’ is ‘go forth and spread the news.’” He said that the difference, the thing that’s changed, is that now word of mouth is “actionable.” Basically, American society has reached a kind of saturation point at the end of traditional marketing. Americans on average receive over 3000 marketing impressions per day, he said. The result is that we tune them out, we question and disbelieve them. As a result, Americans have turned once again to that most trusted of sources: word of mouth. Suddenly a little time and effort expended generating good buzz easily outperforms the best Superbowl commercials when it comes to generating successful conversions. In addition to word of mouth coming round again, Peter says, it can now be spread and multiplied nearly effortlessly via digital media.
In answer to this, WOMMA was founded primarily as an advocacy association that worked across marketing disciplines, taking a little from CS and a little from blogging and several other sources, to form the concept of word of mouth marketing for new media. “The key is motivating people to get involved,” he said. “It’s about instigating and facilitating discussion about your products.” Consumer-generated media is quickly outstripping corporate-generated media in dominating the mindspace of the consumer. It’s the cry we’ve heard for quite some time: brand awareness is dead, now it’s all about engagement. In response to those that have balked at the idea of fostering conversation about their brands and products, he responds: “the conversations are going on, you’re just not taking part in them. You can’t be a bully, you can’t control them, but you can participate.” There it is again: authenticity.
His advice is to get involved and get started now. He says to grab students, grab faculty members, and start facilitating that conversation internally first and then let it move out naturally. He pointed us to a book, The Influentials by Ted Keller and John Barry. He said that about one of ten people are “influentials,” or experts of some type that have some platform of knowledge and respect in the community—whether small or large—that can be harnessed and used to generate buzz and discussion. Whether it’s a world-renowned celebrity or a kid looked up to by a small group of folks, provide the influentials at your school with a platform like a blog and connect them to the world.
If you’d like to get the lowdown on Word of Mouth, then check out this document from WOMMA.
If I don’t go to bed now, then I’m going to end up sleeping through tomorrow’s sessions. Until next time.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
[…] I just found a link to an interesting article on “word of mouth” marketing in the erelevant blog. Although in a few places, the article sounds probably a little bit too idealistic, I think it is still very relevant for Australian universities! Most of the local students (ie Australian students at an Australian university) at our uni come from “the area”, from somewhere in Sydney. I am absolutely convinced that because of that fact, word of mouth plays an even bigger role, as it is highly likely that you know someone who has already been to a particular uni. […]