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Here is the problem with word of mouth experts or word of mouth marketing companies. In my opinion they have little to absolutely no knowledge of branding. Here’s a great example from self proclaimed word of mouth marketing guru Andy Sernovitz, he writes:

A great word of mouth topic has to be interesting, fun, and easy to repeat.  It doesn’t have to be about your product or product features.

In fact, trying to turn your brand message into a word of mouth viral phenomenon will almost always fail–because real people don’t repeat brand messages.

What people like Andy don’t understand (in my humble opinion) is that a company should be true to it’s brand identity first and foremost. For instance, Nike stayed true to it’s brand identity of performance when it developed the tagline “Just Do It”, one of if not the most memorable taglines in the history of business. And I’m pretty sure that was quite a word of mouth phenomenon, dare I say it went “viral” as well.

The point is using “fun, gimmicky” efforts to try and spread word of mouth is a big waste of time and money. Hell, Andy will have you selling 10lb candy bars if you listen to him.

Word of mouth marketing just like any other TACTIC should always be on brand and leverage your brand identity. Someone dressed in a gorilla suit passing out lollipops ain’t gonna get er dun.

But just to visually show you the difference between gimmicky word of mouth and leveraging your brand I give you two examples. Example one is from Andy Sernovitz. Example two is from me, the BIG Kahuna.

Andy Sernovitz demonstrating “A great word of mouth topic has to be interesting, fun, and easy to repeat.  It doesn’t have to be about your product or product features.”

The BIG Kahuna demonstrating the power of delivering on a brand identity:

Vote, which one do you like?

Gosh it amazes me that new marketing, word of mouth marketing and social media types constantly cry about having to make sales for their clients (like it’s a bad thing). It’s like we’ve created a generation of as Arnold would say “girly men“.

Yesterday Spike Jones of Brains on Fire (word of mouth marketing company) wrote this girly man statement:

Is all marketing self serving? It’s a question I struggle with. But I guess it’s because I know the answer: YES, all marketing is self-serving. Even this blog and twitter account and LinkedIn and Facebook and all of it – it’s not just sharing information. It’s self-serving.

Yea, I’m pretty sure we exist to make money and add to that we exist to make our client’s money. Making sales for our customers should be a top if not the top priority.  Some of these girly men are taking social media to a new level, sort of like, dare I say a religion.

Snap out of it people.

Brand Identity Guru is a for profit company that wants to make money for ourselves and our customers. We love and are passionate about what we do and we charge a premium price for it. I get pumped up when I know that something we executed for a client made our client piles of cash.  

Is marketing self serving? You betcha, thank god for that!

p.s. This was my comment to Spike about his blog post:

Maybe you should curl up with a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a romance novel and cry yourself to sleep…

Last time I checked, you, me and all agencies are still in business to make money. Customers want and expect us to profit from them in exchange for the value (whatever that is, including sales) we bring. That’s the payoff.

For many years we’ve been telling our clients and anyone that would listen that your branding touches everything, all the time. I’ve been screaming at clients on their internal policies and procedures. If you set up policies and procedures that work against your brand identity you’re basically shooting yourself in the head. Here’s a great example of that from  George Silverman:

From a recent Hilton email:

.. But Time is Running Out

 

We don’t want to lose you as a valued member. Please act by June 01, 2008 to keep your HHonors account open. If no activity is recorded by that time, the remaining point balance will be forfeited and your account will be closed. Prior to your account closing, you may redeem your points for any eligible reward. For a complete listing of HHonors rewards,

To which I replied:

If you really don’t want to lose a valuable member, don’t apply this pressure. Just keep the account open and don’t hit me with arbitrary requirements.

Read the full story here.

Hilton, change your antiquated policies and procedures or people like George and I will help spread the word…

Give it away.

When all else fails just give your products or services away. That’s what word of mouth guru Andy Sernovitz suggests. In Andy’s latest article “Give away your buns” he suggests that when you have a product or service left over (never going to sell) that a company should just give it away to spread positive word of mouth.

Let’s look at this from a big boy branding perspective.

Andy:

*Unused hotel rooms: Use every empty suite for an upgrade or give empty rooms to families with kids

My brand perspective: Let’s say the Ritz Carlton has some unused rooms. Everyones pretty clear on the brand image the Ritz has, right? If the Ritz started giving rooms away to help spread happy thoughts do you think it could negatively affect their “luxury”, high priced image? Furthermore would non typical Ritz guests start waiting to the end to see if they can get a freebie? Are those the people the Ritz wants?

Andy:

*Car rentals: Reward someone with an unused upgrade

My brand perspective: Sure, maybe to loyal renters but once again it ultimately sends the wrong brand message. Basically you’re devaluing your product/service.

Finally Andy closes with this statement:

Give it away before you throw it away.  It’s worth a dozen referrals.

Yea, you’ll have people running around telling their friends and family to wait to the last minute so they can get it FREE as well.

Here’s a thought. Develop loyal brand ambassadors who understand the value in your product/service. They’ll run around telling everyone they know and you’ll actually get paid for it. Just my thoughts as a branding guy.

Hey, we’re still fighting hard to win this thing, please give us your vote.

Why do word of mouth marketing folks hate on traditional advertising? Today Seth Godin writes:

This is why the Journal’s report that Google is flirting seriously with a big advertising buy is so troublesome. Once you start buying TV time, you just added another tool to your marketing belt. Now, plenty of your development and marketing team will say, “Oh, we’ll just buy ads. People will use it!” Suddenly, you don’t focus so much on building word of mouth and remarkability into your products, because now you can easily use TV to spackle over less remarkable products.

Think about that for a bit. Here’s what I say, that’s freakin ridiculous. Sure, running bad TV spots won’t work but a good strategic integrated branding strategy will. What these Kool-Aid drinking word of mouth marketers never seem to understand is the impact of a strategic integrated branding approach. One tactic lifts up another, they work hand and hand. They all leverage the brand identity. Bingo, it all works.

But, if you do crappy stuff you get crappy results. Don’t hate on any one tactic it’s just shortsighted. Word of mouth marketing can be fantastic, I agree. But great TV ads (insert Mac vs PC here) can also do great things and Apple’s TV ads certainly hasn’t taken away from their word of mouth marketing, has it?

Last week I defended direct mail when word of mouth marketing company Brains on Fire dismissed the entire tactic (read about that here). Today I defend TV advertising. I do this if and only if it’s part of an integrated, strategic branding approach. Focusing on just any one tactic is not something I will ever recommend to a client.

I would be wary of any marketing company that only promoted one tactic, because it’s most likely the tactic they’re selling. Brand Identity Guru is not tied to any tactic, we only use the tactics that are best for the client based on their brand identity goals. BIG difference.

Here’s the latest thing in word of mouth marketing (I guess): These monkeys (if hired) will do something freaky (creative, they call it) stuff to build “buzz” for your brand. In this episode they color themselves with magic markers and tool around town. Genius.

If you’re really looking to waste some valuable marketing budget then this word of mouth marketing gimmick is for you:

First, did you notice how people looked at them? Looked like disgust for the most part.

What message is the brand that hired these guys sending?

How many people saw these guys and actually went to eat at the restaurant they were “promoting”?

It’s been a while but Andy Sernovitz has made the branding blunder blog again, as WaMu used to say… Whoo Hoo! As you know Andy Sernovitz is a self proclaimed “word of mouth marketing guru“. Today in his post titled ” The “Great Green Marketing” Issue” he informs his readers on the right way to market using green tactics. Some snippets of his advice include:

1. Create an amazingly cool shopping bag. Something that is reusable and so cool that people will want to carry it around. For $1 you can have all of your customers become walking billboards all over town (and be happy to do it).

Yea, Andy…that makes your company instantly green. I like the amazingly cool idea as green people will only use it if it’s “cool”? And here is the rub with me. “Green marketing” isn’t something you try to do, it’s a conscience decision a company makes, not to help spread word of mouth or trick consumers into believing they’re green. They do it because it’s part of the brand identity and has a real true meaning. But keep telling your readers how these silly tactics (in my opinion) will help change their brand image.

2. Remember the jelly jars you got as a kid that turned into collectible drinking glasses? No waste, lots of fun — and fantastic marketing. When you get someone collecting your packaging you get instant brand loyalty until the customer completes a set.

Obviously (in my opinion) Andy does not even know the basic definition of brand loyalty. But I’m pretty sure even if this simplified tactic did work a customer would NOT develop brand loyalty. I certainly don’t consider brand loyalty to be collecting a set of anything only to leave the brand after said set is collected. I like my customers coming back all the time, where I’m the ONLY choice, hence brand loyalty. Not brand gimmick loyalty. BIG difference.

Andy doesn’t like me much. He thinks I’m out to get him, so I’m told. But it’s not true. I don’t even know Andy but when he and others advise potential marketers with these silly suggestions (in my opinion) I think it’s important to point out the branding ramifications. And there are definitely brand image concerns if you follow advice from people who clearly don’t know branding.

Producing a “green” shopping bag is not going to help move your brand forward. All it’s really going to do is make you look like a green hypocrite if you’re not fully committed to being green. And that’s all part of your brand identity. In my opinion these gimmicky tactics that Andy recommends could really work against most companies brand identity. Don’t do them unless it leverages your brand identity.

Remember, a word of mouth marketing company will always promote (sell) what they do best. They can’t help it, otherwise they don’t make sales. If you’re looking for a marketing company to help support your efforts try and find one that doesn’t have any bias against specific tactics. A word of mouth marketing company will obviously promote word of mouth and most likely will not understand the branding strategy.

Have you seen the new TV commercial for Crest featuring Emeril? You can catch it here…BAM.

From the Crest Site:

Sure, Emeril has BAM!, but we want to know what you have. The flavor is so bold and so exciting we’re sure you’ll come up with something big.

So here’s what you do: Create an original catch phrase that you think captures the sheer bigness in the flavor of Crest Whitening Expressions. Then, create a video of your Catch Phrase that is 30 seconds or less and submit it into our contest. And if a certain flavor inspired you, let us know.

Viewers can rate the video submissions in the video gallery and judges will then determine the finalists. Once the finalists are chosen it’s up to you to vote for your favorite to determine the grand-prize winner!

 So here are my thoughts:

1. Will this generate the buzz Crest is hoping for?

2. Will it be sustainable?

3. Is this just a gimmick to create word of mouth nothingness?

4. What if any brand strategy is involved?

What do you think? Is this campaign worth anything? They hired Emeril yet are only giving away a measly $5,000?

Readers of my blog know (in my humble opinion) I’ve been critical of word of mouth marketing companies as I think most of them miss the boat on branding. I see lots of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. Then I came across this post:

Keller Fay/OMD Study Finds Offline Word of Mouth More Positive and Credible than Online Buzz

Here’s a quote:

On average, there are 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations that occur daily in the U.S. Offline WOM accounts for 92% of conversations (75% face to face; 17% by phone), and email, IM/text messaging and chatroom/blogs account for 7%.

What does this research tell us? I perceive it as word of mouth marketing is directly tied to and dependent on how one feels about a brand. The more positive you feel about a brand the more one talks. And according to this research people are talking offline.

How do you get people to feel a certain way? Well a remarkable product or service is a good start. And of course proper positioning and brand identity development are crucial. You need to differentiate your company or product and focus. Apple products are not for everyone for a reason. They do a great job of excluding people and selling into their core target market. I am not an Apple brand ambassador. I own an old iPod, that’s it. But my graphic/web designers all use Mac’s and would NEVER switch to a PC, ever. they are part of the Apple cult.

So if you’re considering word of mouth marketing remember one thing. It’s part of branding, treat it as such.

It’s my first, I popped my blogging cherry. Andy Sernovitz has banned me from posting on his blog site Damn! I Wish I’d Thought Of That!. Not only did he ban me but he reported me as a spammer. That’s so uncool. And simply not true. We all know what a spammer is and leaving comments that are different than your opinion is not spamming.

Sorry Andy that in my opinion I find you to be a charlatan.

But now you’re a coward as well.

Many people think Andy is a word of mouth genius…I find him to be more of a smoke and mirrors, marketing gimmick kind of guy. Of course that’s just my humble opinion.

Apparently he didn’t like my opinions of him:

Andy Sernovitz Wants You To Let Him Steal Your Logo?

Marketing Gimmicks Vs Branding Strategy

Can You Build A Brand Around Gimmicks?

High Point University - Hot Tubs and Ice Cream

Andy Sernovitz Branding and Word of Mouth Marketing

Hence I’m banned from learning about how a handwritten smile on a receipt is great word of mouth or like his post today where putting out cookies and candy at a Fantastic Sam’s “makes the difference”.

My day is ruined, I’m banned by Andy Sernovitz.