Peter Kim, a lead analyst at Forrester, is kicking off a session on Word-of-Mouth Marketing with Janet Eden-Harris from Umbria and Dave Balter from BzzAgent. Pete opens with some updated stats about the decline of mainstream media consumption and the increasing amount of time consumers are spending on the Internet. The time consumers are spending is increasingly spent around creating, sharing and consuming content in ways they hadn’t before. With respect to content that is passed along not all content is equal - it is important to remember it is a reflection of the sender.

Janet from Umbria, now a division of JD Power & Associates, shared a variety of case studies from SC Johnson and a major jeans manufacturer - some interesting insights around some of their client engagements. Dave shared what his definition of WOM is “the sharing of an honest opinion between two people”. He then explained their “BuzzAgent” process which is consumer enrollment, campaign invite, product/service shared with folks invites, then feedback reporting for the agents. Everything is transparent and non-scripted. An interesting stat - “40% of WOM interactions include another media form”. WOM is a high-effective in compliment to traditional media - you need a mix. Also, remember a large portion of WOM actually takes place offline verses online. Very interesting stats as measured by BzzAgent about the effectiveness of WOM’s viral nature. The example provided was that when they start a program with say 10k agents they then reach out to 12 individuals on average who then speak to 4.14 individuals for a total WOM effect/factor of 628,000 conversations. Naturally, these happen over a period of time and generate the equivalent of 1.4M hours of conversations.That is pretty impressive but results scaled down a bit as you move away from B2C and tangible products. Some solid questions and audience participation about whether it can really work in B2B or for services verse tangible products.

Good session - Pete, Janet, Dave.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies