November 9th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
So much has been written about the recently concluded Presidential campaign, so I will be careful not to rehash it here. But if there is one lesson coming out of this period that is relevant for you, as the readers of Bazaarblog, it is that social media defined this campaign. Back in June, I wrote about Obama and The Open Brand (a reference to Kelly Mooney’s brilliant book). Then my good friend and fellow entrepreneur Auren Hoffman wrote an article for BusinessWeek in August about technology being the defining factor in election campaigns. From Obama’s social network to the will.i.am music-video community-collage to his exceptional use of the Web as a fundraising vehicle (raising an amazing 400% more than McCain), Obama’s use of social media has defined a new era for election campaigns. Remember that Obama’s innovation adoption of social media comes at a time where five social networks, including Facebook, have recently moved into the top-ten most trafficked websites in the world (reference my June post on Mary Meeker).
When voting moves online, as it undoubtedly will (just think about all of the tax money we would save if we did not have to set up temporary voting centers everywhere), the marriage of social media and election campaigns will be that much more profound.
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July 18th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
This is the third in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.
Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing, keynoted at our Social Commerce Summit, encouraging brands to give customers a reason to talk about your stuff. As Andy highlighted, marketing is what you do, not what you say.
To jump-start those word of mouth conversations on your site and beyond, Andy recommends the following 5 steps:
- Talkers – find the people who will talk
For each brand and product, your talkers will be different people. For the launch of the renowned Wynn in Las Vegas, the hotel invited the city’s cab drivers to stay free of charge for a weekend in order to spur conversations amongst Vegas’ most evangelical workforce.
- Topics – give people a reason to talk
Ask yourself: “Would anybody tell a friend?” It is your job to make customers happy, and remember that happy customers are the best ads.
- Tools – allow your talkers to share
Whether you deploy Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories, or some other social media tool, be sure to equip your customers with an easy way to share ideas and collaborate.
- Taking Part – join the conversation
Reach out to your community, and participate and respond when necessary.
- Tracking
No word of mouth campaign is worthwhile unless it can be measured and improved. Understand to what extent you are engaging your customers, and critically evaluate how you can continue to amplify those conversations.
Books,
Community,
Customer Centricity,
Interviews,
Marketing Strategy,
Ratings & Reviews,
Research,
Social Commerce Summit,
User-Generated Content,
Word of Mouth,
eCommerce
July 6th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
Andy Sernovitz is a Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member and the founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)*. Andy is also a fellow Wharton grad, the author of Word of Mouth Marketing, a serial entrepreneur, and a prominent keynote speaker at many conferences, including our own Social Commerce Summit.
I was happy to see Andy leverage the valuable community we assembled at our first-ever and sold-out Summit in May by recording five video interviews. It was truly an amazing group of individuals, charged with word of mouth marketing at many of the largest companies in the world, from Bank of America to Wal-Mart. It was humbling to be in the presence of so many smart industry leaders, sharing best practices with each other in our rapidly emerging field. Because of them (as well as the hard work by our team), we have set a very high bar for our Summit next year.
Andy recently published his interview of me. We discussed how user-generated content is changing the merchandising culture at companies, helping them become more customer-centric and successful as a result.
Read on to see more interviews by Andy.
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June 23rd, 2008 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Several weeks back (this post has been percolating for a while), I received or interacted with three different examples of "green marketing" in a 24-hour period.
The first was a banner ad from The Home Depot, which promoted two eco-friendly products, encouraging shoppers to "Go Green & Save."
The second was a catalog from Design Within Reach, which cleverly asked "What is Green?" on its cover and featured, again, eco-friendly products, many manufactured from reclaimed materials.
The last was a direct mail piece from The Container Store, which featured green products from Umbra, a brand I really like.
As an eco-conscious consumer, I appreciate any company's genuine efforts to go green. Ideally, this transformation should start with the company's selection of materials, suppliers, and manufacturing processes, so I'm a bit skeptical when I see green marketing without having any knowledge of the company's environmental track record. Green marketing elicits a Pavlovian response from many consumers, so the lure of easy money makes me wary of "greenwashing" campaigns. And I'm not alone. Just Google "greenwashing" and take your pick of websites dedicated to blowing the whistle on companies that stretch the truth on their environmental resumes.
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December 14th, 2007 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Have you seen the Whopper Freakout commercial by Burger King? I saw it tonight on TV and immediately visited the site to see the full 7 minutes and 49 seconds of hilarious footage. In summary, the commercial does an outstanding job of showing the passion that BK customers have for the flame-broiled goodness of the Whopper. BK makes cleverly makes this point by denying the customers of one store their favorite burger.
Andy Sernovitz, a Bazaarvoice advisor and founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), likes to say (I'm paraphrasing here) that advertising is the price brands have to pay for being uninteresting. But occasionally some interesting advertising comes along that makes you laugh hysterically, possibly cry, and swear to tell your friends. That's the goal.
I'm not really a customer of Burger King's (my parents were McDonald's franchisees for over 15 years, so that would be blasphemy!), but I do applaud their advertising creativity in recent years. Subservient Chicken was a word of mouth sensation and the NFL replays that feature a cameo by the King had me laughing aloud. Whopper Freakout extends the streak. Well done, Burger King, well done. Pun intended.
October 2nd, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
As a Board Member for Word of Mouth Marketing Association I'm obviously going to spread word of mouth on our conference. But for good reason.
Every day that customers trust advertising less is a day word of mouth becomes more critical to business growth. Yet there is ambiguity on who should own WOM marketing, what strategies are effective, how it should be measured, who should be targeted, and how to execute the right offline and online tactics.
I personally don't believe companies can be competitive or market leaders without having a comprehensive and operational focus on how their product and service drives word of mouth, along with a clear understanding of how to amplify the customer voice with word of mouth marketing strategies.
If you agree, you'll join me at this years WOMMA Summit, November 14 and 15 in Las Vegas. And, I'll sweeten the deal!…
When you register online, enter the code 'guestofbazaarvoice' for $75 off. And when I see you there, I'll buy (drinks that is…not your bets!).
August 8th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
For my 7th installment of the Word-of-Mouth Wisdom interview series, I am proud to interview Ed Keller. Ed serves on our Board of Directors and is an industry guru as well as a seasoned operational CEO. He has continuously added value to the Bazaarvoice team and Board, and we are constantly learning from him. He is also the founder and CEO of The Keller Fay Group, which is doing some of the most interesting work in the word of mouth field.
1. As the author of "The Influentials", former CEO of Roper, President of WOMMA, Board Director at Bazaarvoice, and CEO of your new business, why do you think the word of mouth movement is buzzing like never before?
Why now and not five years ago?
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July 18th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
[post from Lisa Roberts, Director of Marketing]
Tuesday we hosted a great webinar with Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. As one of the pioneers of "word of mouth marketing", it was especially interesting to hear him define the term. As Andy says, word of mouth marketing is "giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for the conversation to take place". We all know that word of mouth is not a new concept, but it has historically been generated by "experts" or celebrities in a very controlled way. Peoples' buying habits have evolved, and the "experts" are now simply "people like me". Companies today must re-focus their marketing strategies to promote good products, evolve them in a way that is most useful to customers, and give customers the tools to spread the word about their experiences. As Brett said, "The barrier to converse has been significantly reduced." The permanent record that your customers create can make or break your product and brand.
We also talked with Andy about the "5 T's" that he suggests companies think about when implementing or improving their word of mouth strategy. There were two points that really stuck with me:
- The first step is to find "Talkers"; people who will talk about your product. As Andy points out, this is not generally your regular customer that interacts with your brand/products all the time. This is often your new customer. This is someone who has just experienced what you have to offer and is excited to share their opinions. Of course, it can also be your regular customer experiencing something new about your product. If so, you want to make sure it's something they have asked for and that further supports all the reasons why they're already one of your loyal customers.
- Negative reviews provide many opportunities for a very positive user experience. This is something Sam wrote about a couple weeks ago. Negative reviews can help another customer make a more satisfactory purchase decision, can help a manufacturer improve a product in a very distinct and focused way, or can provide the opportunity for a company to "Take Part" and simply say "we hear you and we're going to try to improve".
Check out all of the webinar slides on Slideshare. We're also happy to share the full webinar with audio if you email lisa @ bazaarvoice.com for the download link, username, and password.
Andy also covered this on his blog.
July 3rd, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half..”
-John Wanamaker, advertising pioneer and famous merchant
We had the pleasure of hosting Andy Sernovitz, the founder of WOMMA and a Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member, at our office a few weeks ago. Andy gave a lunch presentation to our team, and something he said really struck me: “Advertising is the tax companies pay to sell poor products”. Google, Starbucks, and many other brave companies decided to buck the formula and invest in the product instead of “brand imagery” (i.e., advertising). Andy has countless examples, and wrote a fantastic book on the subject that has been endorsed by the likes of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki, two of my favorite authors.
And then I met with a large apparel company a week later that is afraid of reviews. Prospect: “We tell the consumer how they should think about our products”. Prospect: “A hip woman in NYC may be turned off by a woman in Topeka, Kansas writing a review on a trendy fashion”. I’ll save you my lengthy and impassioned response.
As I write this, I’m on my flight back from London after spending a week in our UK office, speaking at the e-consultancy conference and meeting with prospects, partners, and press. And tomorrow is the 4th, so I’m feeling kind of revolutionary. So, here is my take on how advertising will evolve.
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