May 31st, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
I was reading an article on Brand Republic titled "Is Social Recommendation the New Currency", and at the bottom was a comment by Guatama Payment, which was especially interesting. He makes the point that the true gold is in the influencers. Ultimately I believe it's a larger audience than 1% that spread the word on your products, perhaps many of them offline, but the principle is valid. By engaging these influencers you are reaching the 'holy grail' of your customer set!
The credibility that underlies word-of-mouth and it's endorsement is nothing new. We've all been communicating person to person since the dawn of time. If anything we are returning to our roots, preferring relationships with people, that are meaningful and rewarding to the cold mass automation of the factory mindset.
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May 26th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
Lounging on the beach with my wife, Debra, on vacation in Maui, today I read "The High Price of Creating Free Ads" in the NY times. It is a story about the rough start that Heinz is having following the lead of Doritos, General Motors, and many others in trying to spark word of mouth through user-generated advertising. Small companies like Blendtec have made a mint by being pioneers in this new format (but their approach was different from Heinz).
The simple fact of the matter is that not every strategy for user-generated content is going to be successful. Partnering with a company that specializes in user-generated content is going to help you significantly because most companies don't have the needed experience in-house. This is a very new field, after all.
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May 24th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
Aloha from beautiful Maui! Debra and I are on vacation with our daughter, Rachel, celebrating our 11-year wedding anniversary.
During a little downtime this week, I have seen three profound examples of user-generated content in action:
1. Today, MarketingSherpa released a new case study on how President's Choice (large Canadian grocer) is leveraging online customer reviews of their private-label products in their stores, circulars, loyalty program, and product lab. It is well worth the read; it is one of the most powerful multichannel examples that we have worked on with any client to date. I also encourage you to look at the creative samples they provided. Note that free access is only available for seven days from the publish date.
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May 23rd, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
About a year ago we stated to analysts and press that while electronics and books were the first to have reviews, clothing retailers (and then manufacturers) would be close to follow. Here's some reinforcement to that, Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org, who was recently quoted in eCommerce times:
Until recently, one factor that did not translate well from the real world to the Internet was word-of-mouth recommendations. Last year, clothing and shoe retailers began to catch up with the social networking phenomenon, owing new patronage to Internet-posted customer reviews that have become popular on clothing Web sites, Silverman said.
It's a big plus "to hear directly from other customers what a product might look like on them, or if it runs large or small," Silverman stressed.
These types of reviews have been popular for some time on sites that sell books and electronic equipment, he noted. Their translation to clothing sites has gone a long way toward reducing reluctance among hesitant online shoppers.
May 18th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
As I promised almost one month ago, I am posting my next Word-of-Mouth Wisdom interview with Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive. Kelly gave a groundbreaking presentation on the Millennials in her Shop.org Annual Summit keynote last year. I decided to revisit this topic, as well as her upcoming book, which I was interviewed for (and I posted that interview in April).
1. Please define "Millennials" and provide our readers with links to your research on them.
I’d refer your truly curious readers to Litmus, Resource Interactive’s white paper on this economically influential but somewhat mystifying generation of consumers. You can also see a slide summary of the presentation and hear the millennials in their own words at our MySpace page.
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