@OpenWOM -- Join Me In Experimenting with Twitter for WOM Research

I love to try new things to better understand how people talk, form relationships, organize, make sense of their lives, engage in WOM... pretty much all things related to communication. And part of what I get to do at Northeastern and for ChatThreads is experimenting with new ways of research (literally, searching or looking again in a new way).

Off and on since last October (more off than on, I have to admit) I've been experimenting with using Twitter as a way of keeping a publicly-available diary of my WOM communication practices. When I have a WOM communication episode (either I'm receiving a recommendation, giving one, or just talking about an interesting organization, brand, product, or service) I post ("tweet") to an account set up at Twitter: @OpenWOM

I called it "OpenWOM" to highlight that it would be an open resource to anyone who wants to use it as another means to find out what people are talking about especially for communication that would otherwise not have a public record (for example, if it's one-to-one or few-to-few communication like face-to-face, phone, IM, e-mail, etc., where there currently isn't a publicly available record).

Here's an example of what I've done with it so far (you only have 140 characters with Twitter so you have to be brief and I've developed some codes which I've explained below).

The following WOM episode took place with four colleagues after a recent trip I had through the Orlando airport. I was telling them about Clear, which is a new security system where you pay an annual fee, get a fingerprint and retina scan, and then can breeze through all the long security lines. We discussed the pros and cons of it, and it was mostly cons. Here's how I represented it to OpenWOM:

@openwom Clear ** 4 cow talked abt new security system I saw at ORD airport - fingerprint and retina scan to breeze thru security

Right now all my tweets to OpenWOM have had six components:

1) The OpenWOM twitter code ("@openwom"): this just needs to appear somewhere in the post so that it gets associated with the OpenWOM project.

2) OBPS ("Clear"): this is the organization, brand, product, or service that is being discussed

3) Valence or Polarity ("**"): this is a measure of valence, whether it was positive, negative, or mixed. It's a five-point scale with "*" meaning it was really negative, "***" mixed, and "*****" really positive

4) Number of people present ("4"): this is simply the number of people, including yourself, that were participating in the conversation

5) Relationship Type of Others Present ("cow"): this stands for coworkers, colleagues, or business associates. There are seven relationship-type codes so far: str (stranger), acq (acquaintance), fri (friend), bfr (best friend), rps (romantic partner or spouse or significant other), rel (relative/family member), and cow (co-worker, business colleague, boss, etc.).

6) Brief Summary of Conversation: i just try to give enough detail for people to get the gist, or for something that I want to remember about it and retrieve later.

At this point I'd like to open it up to others in the spirit of seeing what people do with it. You can check out new tweets by typing "track openwom" in your Twitter account.

I use it for research. Others may use it to show others what they're talking about or to learn what others are talking about. You can also use it as a memory device in case someone gives you a good recommendation.

So, if you are so inclined, send a tweet to @openwom and start sharing your conversations. (You need a Twitter account if you don't have one yet.) Discover new uses for it, propose new codes, offer suggestions for improving it, trash it (constructively, please), etc. You can leave feedback as comments to this post.

Reminder: if you want to track what other people are posting to OpenWOM then type "track openwom" in your Twitter window. Or you can use Tweetscan and enter "@openwom"

Enjoy!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing marketing communication openwom

WOM as Empowered Involvement

There's an interesting line of research out of the European School of Management (Berlin) about WOM. Researchers Dr Frank Jacob and doctoral candidate Martin Oetting are working with the notion of "empowered involvement" as a way to explain managed word of mouth.

They start with the research on involvement and WOM, which dates back to at least the 1960s. Research has documented the important role of ongoing involvement in a category to explain opinion leadership and also elevated levels of WOM behavior. Other research has shown how involvement levels can be raised by providing opportunities for customers to be actively participating in the marketing process.

This research leads them to the notion of "empowered involvement." Can deliberately yielding control of the marketing process to consumers stimulate WOM by creating greater levels of involvement?

The idea of empowerment has historically been studied in human resources management. Thus, these researchers look at how empowerment works with employees as a way to see how it may apply to consumer behavior.

Specifically they cite work by Spreitzer, who defined psychological empowerment as intrinsic motivation. In order to achieve this sense of intrinsic motivation, Spreitzer's research suggests, workers need to feel meaning, competence, self-determination and impact.

This leads the research to define their theory of Empowered Involvement: "When companies allow consumers to experience meaning, self-determination, impact and a sense of personal competence through certain aspects of a marketing process, they can increase these consumers’ situational involvement" [situational involvement is a temporary state of involvement as distinct from enduring involvement, which other research suggests is integral to opinion leadership].

Through two stages of empirical research, the researchers find preliminary support for their model. The results suggest the importance of better understanding how to build relationships with consumers and also how to provide them with sufficient levels of decision-making powers so they feel the four components of empowered involvement: meaning, competence, self-determination and impact.

I'd like to see this research explore, qualitatively, how people come to feel meaning, competence, self-determination and impact in marketing contexts. How is it similar or different to empowerment in the employment context?

Also, how important are the notions of trust and authenticity (that is, it seems reasonable to think that a pre-condition for empowered involvement is that people trust that the company is being sincere and authentic in their desire to listen and involve the consumers)?

Finally, I would also encourage those interested to read the chapter "Loyalty Myths Regarding Employees" in the book Loyalty Myths. The parallels between the empowerment-loyalty relationship and the empowerment-WOM relationship might be instructive.

To learn more about this research on empowered involvement you can visit http://www.empoweredinvolvement.com/ At the site you can download the full working paper.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing marketing communication

Why I Don't Do Karaoke

Tonight I spoke in Dr. Felicia Lassk's MBA-level Marketing Research class at Northeastern. Dr. Lassk is a colleague in the business school and I've had the chance to speak in a few of her classes over the past couple years and I'm honored she keeps inviting me back :-)

The topic tonight was how to measure WOM online and offline. The students, who were very receptive and participatory (especially for a night class when the day after a disappointing loss by the Patriots in the SuperBowl), will be reading the Harvard Business Review case study on Intelliseek next week, so I was sure to talk about some of the work their company does (now part of Nielsen BuzzMetrics/Nielsen Online). I also discussed the diary-based syndicated research from the Keller Fay Group. And she also asked me to talk about my own research on the generational spread of WOM and the new company ChatThreads. All of which I was happy to do.

Owing to the fact that it was a night class I wanted to provide a little bit of relevant entertainment early on and so I showed the "A Comcast Technician Sleeping On My Couch" YouTube video as a segue into discussions about social media monitoring and analysis. Unfortunately, though, the audio in the room wasn't working. The Brian Finkelstein video is set to "I Need Some Sleep" by the Eels, and missing the audio is a bit of a bummer. I tried to sing it, but after the first few notes I employed my well-honed skills in audience adaptation and decided I should stop abruptly (the look of horror on their faces was the give-away).

So, I told them I'd pass along the links to Dr. Lassk so they can watch the video, and one of my favorite spin-offs ("Cancelling Comcast") that illustrates a humorous take on how companies are training their call center employees in the age of social media.

Thanks to Dr. Lassk and her class for a great evening!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication

Yikes! How To Write A Pay-Per-Post Blog!?!

While I was doing some research online yesterday I came across a "How To" website (eHow.com) about how to write a Pay Per Post blog post.

As background, Pay Per Post's business model is to match bloggers and advertisers together: advertisers who want people to write about their products on their blog with bloggers who want to make money doing so. The blogger's deliverable is the post with a brand mention that conforms to any guidelines that the advertiser sets up.

This has been quite a controversial practice since its inception, as it represents a form of shilling. Further, Pay Per Post's initial policy was not to require, or even encourage, disclosure that the person was getting paid to write about the product. Pay Per Post's policy has since changed, coincidentally timed, it seems, with discussions by the FTC and disclosure.

Anyhow, the author sets up the article by saying "This article will help you learn how to rise above the competition and produce higher quality paid posts that your sponsors and readers will love."

Point #1 is to think long term and write a quality post since the advertiser will rate the quality of the post behind-the-scenes: "So while it may be easy to write a quick post for $5, it's better to invest a bit of extra time to understand what your advertiser wants out of the deal." This is concerning because then your endorsement is more for the advertiser than for the other people you are talking with (though the author suggests that you can still write a post your readers will enjoy).

Point #2 is to "Be Honest" about your opinion with the product ("If you lie, they are paying for a false testimonial. This can hurt their company, ruin your reputation as a writer and can get you banned."). OK, fine, honesty of opinion (which is WOMMA's second point in their Honesty ROI guidelines). But nothing about honesty being the ethical thing to do. The author adds the point about being relevant: "Instead, think about reasons why you might use their service or product. How would it help you? How can it help your visitors?"

But then the really strange part is point #3. The blogger says that writing a Pay Per Post blog is "secret" and that "If you want future work, don't tell your readers that you are writing paid posts. This includes filtering the posts into a "paid post" category, or tagging them as such. You are basically telling your sponsor that you are embarrassed to write about them."

I was shocked to read this. I'm not sure if my surprise has more to do with the logical inconsistency between point #2 (be honest) and #3 (don't tell people you are getting paid), or because just point #3 on its own being unethical.

I thought maybe this post was written a few years ago because people don't still think that hiding their identity is the way to go. But no, the post date is January 14, 2008.

Anyhow, folks if you are thinking about participating in the Pay Per Post or similar programs please check out the WOMMA Ethics Code as part of your decision to participate. And if writing a post about how to do it, please consider this.

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Tags: Pay Per Post shilling Stealth Marketing

Journal of Advertising Research -- Special Issue on WOM

JAR, or the Journal of Advertising Research, has put out a special issue exclusively devoted to word of mouth, social media, and social networks. It's actually from the December 2007 issue so I'm still a little behind, but I hope to review some of these articles in upcoming posts, especially since not everyone may have easy access to the journal without a subscription (a benefit of having access to a university library).

People familiar with WOMMA will recognize some of the names, including Ed Keller (Keller Fay Group), Jim Nail (TNS/Cymfony), and Kate Niederhoffer (Nielsen Online).

The opening segment is written by Joseph Plummer, co-editor of the journal. He sets up the special issue by broaching whether or not WOM represents a new advertising discipline or if it's just a fad -- it may be neither -- but leaves it up for the reader to decide.

He also ends with a call for folks to consider JAR as a publication venue for the latest and greatest (and they have a history for publishing WOM-related research, including an excellent piece in 2004 titled "Quantifying the Ripple: Word-of-Mouth and Advertising Effectiveness", JAR, 44: 271-280 by John Hogan, Katherine Lemon, and Barak Libai).

Be sure to give it a look and stay tuned for more!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Missing In Action, But Wouldn't Have Changed A Thing!

Trying to get tenure and blog. No problem. Trying to get tenure, starting a new company, and blogging. Difficult, but manageable. Trying to get tenure, starting a new company, AND having a baby... yeah, well, that's why my last blog post was November 5, 2007, a full 66 days ago!

And I wouldn't, er, couldn't, have done it differently (except maybe announce that I wouldn't be posting for a while). But I needed a break to enjoy some of life's finer moments.

Our baby is the best (especially now that her smiles mean more than just gas and she's sleeping through the night; and as if it wasn't clear, Allyn Marie is pictured above in what I call her "peek-a-boo" photo), the company is off the ground with repeat clients (always a good thing in business), and tenure, well, the tenure process is decidedly not one of the finer things in life -- it's about as much fun as watching late-night talk shows without any writers (long, drawn out, and no fun for anyone).

First, I want to apologize to all the people who wrote me with questions about WOM research, especially the undergraduate and graduate students from universities around the globe. I'm going back through my inbox now and plan to reply to everyone (there's a lot of interest from students in WOM research and it's a privilege to have the chance to talk with some of them in the formative stages of their research).

Second, I missed commenting on a lot of important events in the WOM space over the past two-plus months, namely the release of the WOM Marketing Industry forecast by PQ Media. It's well worth a read if you can get your hands on a copy.

Third, I want to provide an update about the full audio recording for the Net Promoter Discussion at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Research & Metrics Symposium in November. It will be posted on the WOMMA website, but I'm told there have been some challenges getting this up. I had the pleasure of facilitating this discussion between some key players and I appreciate everyone's patience while WOMMA gets this posted, which should be soon.

Finally, I'll provide a preview of what 2008 holds for this blog:

- coverage of the G2X WOM Tracking Methodology and ChatThreads: I've received a lot of inquiries from different companies in the U.S. and internationally who want to measure the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives using this industry-standard methodology and how ChatThreads is leading the way in this effort. So one of my goals is to post entries that respond to some of the most frequently asked questions. Here's a brief article about the methodology and the new company in Research magazine.

- coverage of my current academic and industry research projects and social experiments involving WOM, as well as others' research that I come across or gets sent to me;

- commentary on the state of the WOM industry, both from a research practitioner's and educator's perspective;

- commentary on returning to a Macintosh: I grew up on an Apple IIe, IIGS, and a Mac PowerBook through college and most of grad school, but had to use a PC for part of my doctoral dissertation and for some other work and so I've been away for 7 years -- now I have an iMac running Leopard and VMWare Fusion virtualization, and it's like coming "home" again!;

- perhaps a switch off the Blogger platform?;

- and probably some scattered posts about the joys (and challenges) of being a new dad.

If you stayed subscribed to my feed during my long absence, and it looks like most of you have, I appreciate your patience and look forward to your attention and any comments and discussions in this new year. It's good to be back!

How Likely Would You Be To Recommend Net Promoter for WOM Research?

This is the question we are posing at the WOMMA Research Symposium in Las Vegas on 13 November. I wanted to plug this event at the Symposium in particular on my blog given all the discussions and controversy surrounding the net promoter score and discipline.

For example, over on the Attentio blog Bert Van Wassenhove commented that it was hard to know whose research to trust on this matter and asked: "Can somebody set up a debate between the two opponents so they can discuss at length. Make it a (video)Podcast so there is no time limit at all.”

I am a co-chair on the Research & Metrics Council for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and we have set up a panel for precisely this kind of discussion. Rather than a debate between two opponents we broadened the panel to include some other voices. You can view the agenda here.

Confirmed speakers are Deborah Eastman from Satmetrix; Tim Keiningham from Ipsos-Loyalty; and Matt McGlinn at BzzAgent. We’ll also be having a speaker who has used the net promoter approach in their company.

Given the interest in this topic I’ve asked WOMMA to make the audio recording available on their website after the event, which they agreed to do.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing Net Promoter Score

My Presentation at UGA Connect 2007

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The good people at UGA have uploaded my presentation at the Connect conference to Slide Share. Be sure to check out the other presentations from the PR and social media conference, including Kevin Dugan's keynote on the opening night and Dr. Robert Sprague's talk on the legal issues surrounding WOM and social media.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing UGA Connect 2007

Is Twitter Better for Live Blogging of an Event?

Compare the Connect blog to the Flicker tweets feed. Which gives better live coverage of the event?

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Tags: UGA Connect 2007 Conference

Constantin Basturea on Social Media

Constantin contends that many companies are still in the "I Want" stage. They see a story about blogging and say "I want blogging."

Constantin remarks on the Dell story that recently appears in Business Week and how they have become a success story. One point he raised is that it took a year from when they first realized people were talking about them in the blogosphere to do outreach, get a blog up and running, and start to change their business practices. He feels that companies need to have realistic expectations about what it takes to get to make a change and that it may not happen at the fast-paced speed of the blogosphere, for example.


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Tags: UGA Connect 2007 Conference

KD Paine on Social Media Measurement

A few quotations from KD's talk:

There is no market for your message. Does it matter that you reached eyeballs? Or does it matter that you engaged people in a conversation?

Spin is dead. Long live transparency. If you want to increase trust, increase your transparency.

ROI doesn't mean what it used to. If you're just measuring hits then you're in trouble (HITS = How Idiots Track Success). Measure what people are doing with the content you provide.

KD is suggestion people look at Forrester's approach to engagement: Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, and Influence.

KD is also working on a transparency index, which is a combination of what you disclose because you have to, because you want to, and because it's the right thing to do.

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Tags: UGA Connect 2007 Conference

Josh Hallett on Social Media

A couple quotations from Josh Hallet on Social Media:

"Technology will never replace people. People who use technology will replace people who don't."

"When hiring for their last position at Josh's PR agency the decision to hire the candidate was based on how well they used social media, specifically how the candidate used Facebook to promote events for her sorority."

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Tags: UGA Connect 2007 Conference

Live from Athens! (Georgia, that is)

In Athens at the University of Georgia for the Connect Public Relations and Social Media Conference.

The conference kicked off last night with Kevin Dugan talking about the new world of social media and the opportunities, and potential dark side, it presents for PR professionals. His talk was titled "We>Me" and did a nice job to set up some of the core issues with social media: transparency, human connection, having clear goals for working with social media technologies rather than just the "shiny tools" themselves. He also asked us to consider "what is content?" -- PR traditionally considers just "text" as content but he feels it's much broader including audio, video, links, comments, etc.

I speak at 10:30 am on "Organizing for Conversation: What Research Needs to Tell Us". I will discuss my four phase model of conversational engagement which focuses on how organizations come to understand what it means to "join in the conversation".

Here are the official social media venues: conference blog, Flickr pics, and Twitter feeds.

Should be fun!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication UGA Connect 2007 Conference

Is Ford's "Swap Your Ride" Program an Example of Stealth Marketing?

I've noticed the Ford commercials where everyday car drivers were able to swap their non-Ford cars with a Ford vehicle for one week so that they could experience what the Ford vehicle was like. In the commercial, and on the Swap Your Ride's website, Ford was very up front that they didn't tell the people whose cars were swapped that the camera crews were from Ford and instead told them they were doing "market research" (if you watch the "Behind the Scenes" video at the website they justify doing this because Ford wanted the drivers' honest opinions). Ford videotaped each person's experience and promoted these stories in the commercial and on the website, again without telling the people the film crews were from Ford.

In order to actually make the commercial or put these people's stories on the website I'm sure Ford had to secure the people's permissions and at that time they must have found out Ford was behind this. So it seems like we have an example of "delayed disclosure" going on here.

This makes a great case study for one of my classes. Here's a question I would pose to my students: Is the Ford "Swap Your Ride" program an example of stealth, or undercover, marketing? And if so, is this unethical? First, a definition. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) defines stealth marketing as: "Any practice designed to deceive people about the involvement of marketers in a communication."

Second, we need a set of criteria to work with. Let's use WOMMA's Honesty ROI guidelines to briefly work through this case. Why is this an appropriate set of guidelines? Is this a WOM marketing program, and if so, how? I would contend it is because the marketer is using stories or testimonials from everyday people about their product-related experiences in order to engage an audience and promote their brand.

Of the honesty of relationship, opinion, and identity, it seems that this program initially fails on the first but is OK on the second and third. Specifically, Ford didn't have its crew disclose the fact that they were working for Ford and instead said they were market researchers (violates honesty of relationship). The people in the video seemed to be real people (that is, not actors or employees of the company, or otherwise paid or compensated beyond getting the chance to drive a new car around for a week; so honesty of identity seems OK here). And these real people seem to be providing their own unscripted, honest assessments (honesty of opinion; though it's clear the comments were edited and we have no access to any negative comments anyone might have said). Interestingly the video on the website uses the language of "Real people. Real opinions." which supports the analysis so far.

So, according to WOMMA's Honesty ROI ethical framework, this really comes down to an issue of disclosure of the marketer's relationship. There was an intent to deceive but it was justified on the grounds of soliciting people's honest opinion. And Ford came clean about it to the larger audience in their commercial and in the video. (Interestingly, this deceit is also carried out in academic research, as long as the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs, that the disclosure eventually occurs, and that no one gets hurt in the process.)

So, let's think about if anyone got hurt here. The drivers are getting to drive around in a new car for a week and show it off to their friends which juices their sense of being special. There could be a feeling of being "duped" and there may have been some backlash. And this may have had the effect of undermining credibility in marketing activities or making it that much more difficult for real market researchers to do their work (see the Market Research Society's Code of Conduct for interesting thoughts on this; of course the people doing the commercial aren't actually market researchers so they wouldn't be bound by such guidelines).

Ford must have done all their legal due diligence about the deception. It's probably legal since the larger audience in the commercial or video was informed that Ford was deceiving people for the purposes of filming the videos. It seems that it comes down to the following: in what situations is "delayed disclosure" (un)ethical*? Is disclosure a black or white issue or are there shades of gray? And does the WOMMA Honesty ROI or The Ethics 20 Questions give us the tools to make this decision?

What do you think?

* The issue of delayed disclosure is addressed by Justin Foxton in the book Connected Marketing (chapter titled "Live buzz marketing") so interested readers can also turn there.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication stealth marketing Swap Your Ride

Executive Preview for "Measuring the Ripple" Now Available!

I am pleased to announce my latest research on word of mouth marketing communication. This is from research that has been over a year in the making and is the result of an important academic-industry collaboration.

Due to publication restrictions I am unable to release the full report, which will actually be a co-authored piece to appear in the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Measuring Word of Mouth, Volume 3 research book in November 2007, so I wanted to make available the following executive preview.

You can read the executive preview here in this post, but I recommend that you download the PDF version at my download page as it is more comprehensive. The last academic-industry research report I released on my blog, the "To Tell Or Not To Tell?" report on the role of disclosure in organized word of mouth marketing programs, generated a great deal of commentary from readers so I invite the same level of thoughtful discourse regarding this piece.

Finally, this line of research has been especially important to my work in the word of mouth space, not only for subsequent academic publication on the topic, but also because it has led to the formation of a new company, called ChatThreads, an independent word of mouth research company that derives actionable insights from how word of mouth communication spreads among individuals and social networks (but more on that later).

Without further ado, I give you the...

Executive Preview for “Measuring the Ripple: Creating the G2X Relay Rate and an Industry Standard Methodology to Measure the Spread of Word of Mouth Conversations and Marketing-Relevant Outcomes” [Download this as a PDF]

From the childhood game of telephone, and our personal experience with rumor and gossip, we are all familiar with the idea that word of mouth (WOM) spreads from person to person. We have also heard that WOM spreads in multiples from one generation, or degree of separation, to the next – one person tells two people who tell four who tell eight, and on and on it goes. And then there are those instances where the buzz about a product, service, or idea seems to explode exponentially. When you add in the fact that peer-to-peer conversations and recommendations are among the most trusted forms of communication, it is no surprise that many marketers find word of mouth initiatives a compelling proposition. But childhood games, folk wisdom, and alluring anecdotes aside, how do we really know how far marketing-relevant conversations spread, and the impact of those conversations? And what data exist to help marketers set norms and benchmarks?

To answer these questions, Northeastern University collaborated with a leading word of mouth media platform, BzzAgent, Inc., to develop an industry-standard methodology that reliably tracks the spread and impact of peer-to-peer conversations over time and across both offline and online channels. The methodology has been developed and refined for marketing campaigns across a range of product and service categories – from beverages to books, food to pharmaceuticals, and personal care to paints – allowing for the development of category-specific and third-party validated norms and benchmarks.

In the context of this methodology, a participant in a WOM marketing program will be described as a Generation Zero or “G0” Program Participant. The first set of conversational partners with whom this program participant speaks will be described as a G1 conversational partner. The people with whom they speak will be described as G2 conversational partners and so on, all the way out to GX. Thus, the provisional name for this methodology is the “Generational Relay to X” WOM Tracking Methodology, or “G2X.” See the Glossary for more details.

Key findings from studies using this methodology include:

o Previous research underestimated the relay rate (the number of people told at each generation, or degree of separation, from the initial source) by not taking into account how conversations continue to spread over time. Existing research by Northeastern University established a Generation 2 (or G2) relay rate of 1.65 for the number of new people told after a person had a brand-related conversation with a Program Participant in a marketing campaign. By investigating if people continue to have conversations about the product or service over an additional six weeks, the relay rate for campaigns represented in this research can be revised to 4.14 (that is, a person who talked with someone participating in a WOM marketing program told 4.14 other people about the product, on average, during a six week period of time).

o While a majority of the participants in the study (78%) had at least one additional conversation during the course of the six-week extended period, researchers observed a noticeable decay in the number of people those participants told over time. The decay rate was as follows: in the first two days after the initial conversation with the person participating in the marketing program, the “conversational partner” reported telling 1.43 other people, on average. During the next time period, one week after the initial report, conversational partners reported telling an additional 1.38 people about the brand. Three weeks from the first report, 0.76 new people were told about the brand. Six weeks after the initial report, 0.57 new people were told. Twenty-two percent (22%) of the people reported no additional conversations after the initial conversation with the person participating in the WOM marketing program.

o Researchers discovered that it is possible to reliably measure the reach and impact of WOM marketing initiatives across a range of product and service categories, which is an important first step in creating industry standard norms. Relay rates, and other key performance indicators, like awareness, trial, and purchase intentions and behaviors, can be measured on a campaign-specific basis, as well as across campaigns, so that managers can determine campaign effectiveness relative to benchmark data.

o Similarly, the reach and impact of WOM marketing programs can be independently measured and validated by a third-party. This opens the door for industry-wide third-party measurement that is seen in more mature media industries like radio, TV, and print.

o By using dyadic (two-person) or multi-party measurement designs researchers demonstrated how it is possible to validate each person’s self-report about conversational details and the impact of those conversations, thus overcoming a traditional limitation of self-report data. For example, in the case of a campaign for an electronic personal care product, WOM program participants reported that slightly more people participated in a conversation than their conversational partner peers (i.e., 1.83 versus 1.55 other people, a difference of 0.28). However, this difference was not statistically significant. Since results vary from campaign to campaign, managers can use this methodology to determine if there are statistically significant discrepancies in self-reported data (whether there is over- or under-reporting), and revise relay rates or other key performance indicator values accordingly.

o In addition to quantitative reach, the methodology developed can also provide rich, qualitative insight into how people engage in brand-related conversations. By looking at the locations where conversations occur, the activities in which people are engaged while talking, the medium used (face-to-face, phone, e-mail, IM, blog, message board, etc.), and references to other media forms (like ads, editorials, and in-store promotions), managers can gain actionable insights into developing and refining subsequent marketing campaigns.

Results from the first set of studies are scheduled to appear as a co-authored paper with BzzAgent, Inc. in the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Measuring Word of Mouth, Volume 3 research book, to be released in mid-November 2007. The full manuscript will provide detailed information regarding the methodology and demonstrate how it was utilized to independently validate the effectiveness of an actual WOM marketing campaign.

Funding for this research was provided as part of a Sponsored Research Agreement (SRA-0667) between Northeastern University and BzzAgent, Inc.

Download a PDF version of this executive preview.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication G2X WOM Tracking Methodology

Continued Discussion on Net Promoter Score

In my long absence from posting (over a month!) there have been some great discussions about the Net Promoter Score. Be sure to see some of the comments to my last post where Amy Madsen and Deb Eastman from Satmetrix have weighed in, Tim Keiningham from Ipsos-Loyalty (and author of some recent academic articles critiquing the Net Promoter Score), and Justin Kirby, who has blogging and conducting podcast interviews about the debate.

Additionally a new article on the topic, also written by Tim Keiningham and colleagues, has appeared in Managing Service Quality entitled The value of different customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics in predicting customer retention, recommendation, and share-of-wallet. This article is more of a micro-level, or customer-level, analysis and worth reading.


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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication Net Promoter Score

More Trouble for Net Promoter Score? A Longitudinal Examination of 'Net Promoter' on Firm Revenue Growth

The latest critique of the Net Promoter Score is now available for free download from the Journal of Marketing. The article is titled "A Longitudinal Examination of 'Net Promoter' on Firm Revenue Growth" and written by Timothy L. Keiningham, Bruce Cooil, Tor Wallin Andreassen and Lerzan Aksoy.

I wrote about this article in an earlier post (one of many in a series on the Net Promoter Score topic). Although there are still some differences in methodology (like slightly different wording for the likelihood to recommend question and different time periods used in the analysis) this study is the closest to an apple-to-apples comparison between the net promoter score and satisfaction and loyalty indicators.

Here's the abstract:

Managers have widely embraced and adopted the Net Promoter metric, which noted loyalty consultant Frederick Reichheld advocates as the single most reliable indicator of firm growth compared with other loyalty metrics, such as customer satisfaction and retention. Recently, however, there has been considerable debate about whether this metric is truly superior. This article (1) employs longitudinal data from 21 firms and 15,500-plus interviews from the Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer to replicate the analyses used in Net Promoter research and (2) compares Reichheld and colleagues' findings with the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Using industries Reichheld cites as exemplars of Net Promoter, the research fails to replicate his assertions regarding the “clear superiority” of Net Promoter compared with other measures in those industries.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication Net Promoter Score

Bon Nuit Geneve

I just had a wonderful experience in Geneva, Switzerland where I spoke at the Marketing and Direct Focus Europe 2007 conference hosted by Baptie and Company. I gave the keynote address on the second day which is traditionally reserved for an academic offering her/his view on the state of marketing (thanks to Paul Marsden for the referral). This conference was focused on the B2B sector, and specifically the technology industry. I feel like I contributed a lot to the conference -- I spoke on the implications of Web 2.0 to companies and the four phase model of conversational marketing that I've been developing (oblivious, monitoring, listening and responding, and joining in) -- but ultimately I feel like I took away more than I contributed.

The people there were incredibly smart, representing marketing professionals for many of the large and middle-sized tech firms in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Attendees included Google, Microsoft, HP, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, and Oracle just to name a few of the larger firms.

The Chatham House Rule applied to the workshops and presentations -- which is the UK version of "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" -- so I won't go into a lot of the details about what the main themes and take-aways were. However, I will comment on my reflections for how Web 2.0 played out at the conference.

I found that many companies were focusing on Web 2.0 and the implications to their business. This is quite understandable and happens anytime something as powerful as this cultural shift comes along. However, I couldn't help but think that people were focusing too much on how to leverage Web 2.0 technologies, like Second Life, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., without a clear articulation of WHY they would even want to leverage them. That is, I think it's more productive to START WITH the goals they would like to accomplish, and then think of the range of ways these goals could be accomplished, perhaps including Web 2.0 technologies and perhaps not. It's a subtle, but I think important point.

As I mentioned above, I found this conference extremely valuable for my understanding of the B2B tech sector in Europe and the people extremely pleasant. People were genuine and willing to share their own insights with others. It was a wonderful experience. Thanks to Rod Baptie and crew for their incredible efforts at organizing this conference. I look forward to the opportunity to participate in such an event again!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication

New Media Summit 2007 Resources

Well, the folks at Edelman and PRWeek outdid themselves in putting on an informative and interactive conference on the implications of social media for the communication industry (esp. PR and journalism) and educating current students.

I started blogging during the event (see my last post) but was unable to keep up with all that was going on. Fortunately, the organizers taped everything and posted it on its New Media Summit 2007 website. I understand that summaries and/or transcripts of the sessions will also be available. These will make for great teaching tools as well. (Hopefully Edelman will leave this site up for a while or enable educators to load the videos on to faculty members' course management systems for when we teach classes).

A consistent theme for the conference was the following observation offered initially in the opening panel last night:

People have a tendency to overestimate the short-term consequences of the new social media technologies, and underestimate the long-term consequences.

Clearly, we're still in the early days of these consequences and it's an exciting time to be researching and teaching in this space.

It's hard to say which was the best panel of the day, but if you are going to view just one or two of them, I would pick the "Co-creating Content" panel or the "What's Next for New Media" panel. On the Co-creating Content panel I really enjoyed hearing from the Zagats because they talked about how they were involved in customer reviews and co-creation many years ago when first starting their Zagats guides. Plus, some of the jokes from Bob Mankoff were very, very funny (even more amusing were Jackie Price's attempts to reign him in and keep the panel on topic -- eventually even she had to give in to his wit; by the way, if you want to learn how to do an excellent job of transitioning between speakers as a moderator watch how Jackie did this -- they were seamless!).

Of course, you can watch my panel session as well ("Enabling the Digital Generation"). Having the chance to participate with David Weinberger and Merrill Brown was a pleasure!

Anyhow, enjoy the videos and thanks again to Edelman!








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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication Edelman New Media Summit 2007

Live from New York, It's Friday Morning at the New Media Academic Summit

Blogging today from the Harvard Club on 44th street in the Big Apple at the Edelman New Media Academic Summit. The first panel was about engaging consumers through social networks. Panelists include Scott Donaton (Publisher of Advertising Age), Babs Rangaiah (Director, Media & Entertainment, Unilever USA), Scott Heiferman (co-founder and CEO of Meetup), and moderated by Pam Talbot (President and CEO, Edelman US).

Babs talked about the Axe, Dove, and Whisk initiatives. For the Whisk laundry detergent campaign he talked about where people were able to upload their own photos of kids being dirty and place them on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Then people had the ability to print this picture as well as forward an e-version to other people. A key take-away for me from what he had to say was the following quotation: "Build the brand in a way that makes customers want to play." This is a key point because it's about providing tools and resources that give people sufficient flexibility to do things that are relevant to their lives.

Scott Donaton from Advertising Age talked about how he sees the challenge as moving from an intrusion model to an invitational model for marketing and advertising. A key point here is figuring out what elicits the invitation. A first answer to this question that he provided was "relevancy". The invitational model forces companies to come up with something useful and relevant to people's lives that make those people want to invite the brand in.

Scott Heiferman from Meetup anticipates a backlash from people living their lives too much in front of screens and feels there is tremendous power of offline networks of people who can use Meetup to help "organize people" (as distinct from Google's motto of "organizing information"). He explained how Meetup groups are locally organized and are built around shared interests. For example, in New York City dog lovers are organized by sections of New York and by dog breeds (for example, doxon lovers on the upper East side). On their own, the organizers of each of these Meetup groups banded together and went to retailers who specialized in dog products and services (like Doggie Day Care) and made a proposal. They basically said that if the retailers would provide a discount for their Meetup members, then the Meetup members would promote those retailers among their social networks. I found this to be an interesting idea of people initiating interactions and inviting companies in based on what was relevant to themselves (and, coincidentally, mutually beneficial to the company as well).

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication Edelman New Media Academic Summit