Having understood the perceived benefits and positives of buzz marketing/CGM/CGA/etc. this week in class, this article provides another view (generally negative) of buzz marketing. An interesting read.
The following was published in Forbes magazine by Jack Trout.
Link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/columnists/columnists/2006/03/02/gm-harley-marketing-cx_jt_0307trout.html
Tales From The Marketing Wars: Is Word Of Mouth All It's Cracked Up To Be?
Jack Trout 03.07.06, 6:00 AM ET
Suddenly, everyone is running their mouths about word-of-mouth marketing. You can tell things are getting a little out of hand when you discover there is now a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association called WOMMA. And there are conferences popping up all over the world on this subject. One recent conference had over 400 attendees.
And that's not all. Now we have a new dictionary to learn. Word-of-mouth is now buzz marketing, viral marketing, community marketing, grassroots marketing, evangelist marketing, product seeding, influencer marketing, cause marketing, conversation creation, brand blogging and referral programs. That's the good stuff. What isn't so good is stealth marketing, shilling, infiltration, comment spam, defacement and falsifications.
If you're like me, you're probably a little confused about all this, so let's put some things into perspective.
First of all, world-of-mouth isn't new much less "the next big thing" that WOMMA declares. A third-party endorsement of your product has always been the Holy Grail. It's more believable.
In prior days, we used to try and find the "early adapters" for a product. We figured they had big mouths and loved to tell their friends and neighbors about their new widget.
What's different today is people have many more ways to communicate. Instead of just verbal we now have digital communications. Online chatter far surpasses over the fence chatter in every way, with the exception of clearly knowing the person with whom you are chattering. The trouble is that the ease of communicating en masse has raised the noise level to mind boggling levels. That's the good news.
Now for the bad news.
How many people really want to chatter about products? Do you really want to talk about your toothpaste or your toilet paper? Even people with prestige products tend not to chatter about them. All you really want is to be seen driving up in one. Now, if it's a Harley Davidson motorcycle, sure. That's because you're part of a club, and that's all they talk about. But they don't need buzz.
No product in memory got as much buzz and PR as the Segway gyroscopic scooter. The problem is that most of the buzz was negative. "Funny looking or dangerous on sidewalks" is not what you want to hear. Buzz can kill you if you don't have the right product. The very expensive movie King Kong was a bust because of a lot of negative word-of-mouth. "Too long, too loud and overdone." The Pontiac G6 giveaway on Oprah got a lot of buzz but the car died at the box office. People would take one for free, but not if they had to pay for it. You've got to have a product or service people want to talk about in a positive way, and there aren't many of these around.
Now for the really bad news. There's no way to control that word-of-mouth. Do I want to give up control and let consumers take over my campaign? No way. They aren't getting paid based on how many widgets get sold. If I go to all this trouble developing a positioning strategy for my product, I want to see that message delivered. Buzz can get your name mentioned but you can't depend on much else. Not too many mouths will do a stand-up commercial about your product vs. its competitor. Nor will they check with you in advance on what to say.
This all brings me to my word-of-mouth on word-of-mouth marketing. It's not the next big thing. It's just another tool in your arsenal. If you have a way to get your strategy or point of difference talked about by your customers and prospects, that's terrific. It will help, but you're going to have to surround it with a lot of other effort, including, if you'll pardon the expression, advertising. You just can't buy mouths the way you can buy media. And mouths can stop talking about you in a heartbeat once something else comes along to talk about.
This all brings me to my word-of-mouth on word-of-mouth marketing. It's not the next big thing. It's just another tool in your arsenal. If you have a way to get your strategy or point of difference talked about by your customers and prospects, that's terrific. It will help, but you're going to have to surround it with a lot of other effort, including, if you'll pardon the expression, advertising. You just can't buy mouths the way you can buy media. And mouths can stop talking about you in a heartbeat once something else comes along to talk about.
I certainly would never tell a CEO, "B.J., I just put a big chunk of our budget into word-of-mouth."
If you did, all I would say is "good luck".
With more than 40 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Jack Trout is the acclaimed author of many marketing classics, including Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Marketing Warfare, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Differentiate or Die, Big Brands Big Trouble, A Genie's Wisdom and his latest, Trout on Strategy. He is president of marketing consultancy Trout & Partners and has consulted for such companies as AT&T, IBM, Southwest Airlines, Merck, Procter & Gamble and others. Recognized as one of the world's foremost marketing strategists, Trout is the originator of "positioning" and other important concepts in marketing strategy.
BTW...WOMMA stands for Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, an association that promotes and improves word-of-mouth marketing. (http://www.womma.org/)
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