George Silverman's Word-of-Mouth Marketing Blog

Example of How to Promote a WOMworthy Product Via Word-of-Mouth Marketing: AeroPress

Here's a great example of word-of-mouth marketing, on many levels.

Background: I’ve recently gotten into home coffee roasting. It’s a growing trend that you're going to be hearing a great deal about. The whole home coffee-roasting phenomenon is rife with wonderful word-of-mouth examples and case studies, about which I will be posting soon. [There is a whole universe out there that every marketer can learn a tremendous amount from in the worlds of green coffee bean sellers, roasting machines (including hot-air popcorn poppers!), grinders and coffee makers. The brilliant marketing and the blunders of these people provide some amazing examples of how to market products on extremely low budgets in long-tailed, niche markets.]

Anyway, I saw a post in Josh Rubin’s Cool Hunting Blog about a coffee maker, the Aerobie AeroPress, and landed on its website. I actually did not land on its home page, but on the page referenced in the Cool Hunting Blog, which is an info page.  (Click here for the page)

Wow! It’s a masterpiece (I suspect because it is probably constructed by an amateur, probably the inventor himself. :update: see update at end). It's better than the home page (pretty good, also) Almost the whole thing is carried by a series of testimonials, which they brilliantly call “reviews.” (I’m going to change my vocabulary over to mostly use the word “review” instead of  “testimonial.”)

There is a list of short testimonials, whoops reviews, that are extremely specific and to the point. They are sourced from an impressive bunch of people, starting with “It makes the absolute best cup of coffee I’ve tasted in my entire life.”  –Louis Singer  –Cook’s Junction. Instantly, you are – or at least I was – hooked.

Notice an important principle of word-of-mouth marketing here: your customers can say things for you that you just can’t say yourself. If the headline were, “the best cup of coffee that you’ve ever tasted,” it would be totally unbelievable. Unless, of course, it was followed by a quote, thereby giving it credibility. There follow another 15 very interesting short quotes. Some general, some specific. Some with sweeping praise, others with short stories. Study these reviews carefully. They are a living lesson on the kinds of testimonials you want to elicit, using the techniques in my book. I could spend an entire workshop on just this one page, particularly these 15 testimonials reviews.

Then, and only then, once you are hopelessly hooked if you are a coffee lover, it is followed by five very short paragraphs under the heading “There Are Several Reasons Why AeroPress Coffee Tastes So Good:”

Total immersion of the grounds in the water
results in rapid yet robust extraction of flavor.

Total immersion permits extraction at a
moderate temperature, resulting in a smoother brew.

Air pressure shortens filtering time to 20
seconds. This avoids the bitterness of long
processes such as drip brewing.

The air pressure also gently squeezes the last
goodness from the grounds, further enriching the flavor.

Because of the lower temperature and short
brew time, the acid level of the brew is much
lower than conventional brewers. Laboratory
pH testing measured AEROPRESS brew's
acid as less than one fifth that of regular drip
brew. The low acid is confirmed by coffee
lovers who report that AEROPRESS brew is
friendlier to their stomachs.

Notice, EVERY feature followed by a benefit. Simple. Elegant. Not a wasted word. (Wish I could write like that!) Look the paragraph above. Laboratory third party proof assertion, followed by confirmation. No hype adjectives. No BS. Totally  believable. Hot damn, this is good.

Then, the question is going to be, “Well, how does it compare with my present methods?” So, a comparison of brewing methods follows, specifically telling you the shortcomings of drip brewing, espresso machines, pod brewers and French presses. These negative comparisons are not just bald, self-serving assertions, they are often put into the mouths of third parties, a.k.a. word of mouth.

Then, it tells the story of the invention of the AeroPress by Alan Adler, a Stanford University mechanical engineering lecturer who is also the inventor of the Aerobie, a Frisbee-like object that holds the record for the world’s furthest thrown object (about a quarter of a mile) and President of the Aerobie company, which has about 15 other extraordinary products.

AEROPRESS is the result of several years of applied research by inventor/engineer Alan Adler. He conducted numerous brewing experiments, measuring the brew with laboratory instruments. The experiments demonstrated that proper temperature, total immersion and rapid filtering were key to flavor excellence. He then designed and tested dozens of brewers before settling on the AEROPRESS design. The design was further validated by coffee lovers who tested prototypes in their homes. Adler has about forty U.S. patents and an equal number of foreign patents. He is President of Aerobie, Inc, Palo Alto, California and a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. Adler's best-known invention is the Aerobie flying ring which set the Guinness World record for the world's farthest throw (1,333 feet).

(Notice the great example of soft-sell, inferred WOM throughout.)

Then they have a link to a list of walk-in and Internet retailers in the United States and internationally. When you go to those sites, you see other reviews, none of which is less than four stars and most of which are five stars. Furthermore, you can buy this thing for less than $30. (On an obnoxious, interruptive commercial it would be worded “not $1500 for an expensive espresso machine, not $1000, not $500, no not $250 or even $100. Yours for only one single payment of $25 plus shipping! Of course, on the AeroPress site, they only imply that it is inexpensive and let you be pleasantly surprised later.)

By the way, I learned on several of these other sites that Alan Adler participates in coffee discussion groups. Another a word-of-mouth lesson: join the discussion. I haven’t found any examples yet, but I’m sure he acts like an engineer and not a marketer: fact and evidence-based, reasonable, noticeable absence of hype, plenty of real-life examples, etc. One negative: he doesn’t have a blog yet; I’d subscribe in an instant.

Of course, I ordered it, paying a little extra at my favorite coffee site, Sweet Maria’s, so that I could take advantage of shipping efficiencies and trying a couple more examples of their extraordinary green beans. Sweet Maria’s is a wonderful example of how to differentiate your product through informational and educational enhancements. I use their example in word-of-mouth speeches all the time. More about them in some future posts.

How’s that for word of mouth? I got so excited that I’m posting about it before it even arrives! Of course, that’s several more lessons: when you get someone this excited, you better deliver the goods or you will have more than a disappointed ex-customer; you will have an angry one. Also, you can create an insanely great product in a mundane, niche market if you include all the right ingredients: On the one hand, it’s just a tube with a plunger. On the other hand, its years of dedicated experimentation, plus huge amounts of creative intelligence, plus a whole lot of other things, resulting in the extraordinary elegance and simplicity of a tube with a plunger that’s going to save me from countless horrible cups of coffee in hotel rooms. I can’t wait.

Update:  Got so enthused, I spoke with their General Manager, Alex Tennant. He confirmed what I expected: Although he has an MBA in marketing, he is not a professional marketer -- he runs the company. He and Alan, their engineer president, wrote all of the copy. No agencies involved. He says, ”Our aim is to create extraordinary products.“ These guys don't have a separate marketing function. Or, to be more precise, their whole company is the marketing function: creating extraordinary products and then being straightforward in presenting them honestly, letting their products and their customers do the talking. How often does that happen? I've gotta meet these guys.

Further update: I've been using it for months now, and it's the best coffee maker I've ever used. You have to get used to the taste (was a little disappointed at first) because there is absolutely no bitterness, so cream can overwhelm it unless used very sparingly. I now often drink it black, or with very little cream. Most people have never tasted really fresh-roasted coffee (between 1-7 days after roasting is the flavor peak). It's a different experience. The problem is now that I can't stand almost any coffee that I get anywhere else.

For the enthusiasts: As of now, my favorite is Sweet Maria's Puro Scuro Blend green coffee (unroasted) roasted in the Hearthware I-Roast 2, then made in the AeroPress. Heaven.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
main website: www.mnav.com    blog: wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: Marketing, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

WOM Lessons of Windows on Intel Mac

As I predicted, it happened. I won’t rehash the thousands of blog posts on the subject of running Windows on the Intel Mac. For those who haven’t heard, and for the record, Apple announced yesterday an official version of a program that allows Windows to run on the newer Macs with Intel chips and they announced that it will be built into the next update of their operating system.

Thousands of blog posts were instantly posted yesterday. The announcement made the front page of the New York Times and the front page of the second section of the Wall Street Journal today. All of this despite the fact that Apple virtually hid the announcement: no usual big splash, not on the home page of their web site, buried in their web site. This, despite the fact that it’s one of the biggest announcements in the computer industry in the last decade.

The reason I’m talking about it here is because it illustrates many word of mouth and other marketing principles, and allows us to make many predictions.

As I’ve said before here and here, there is a huge disconnect between the word of mouth for Macs and their actual sales. Only about 2.6% of business users use Macs. But more than half of them say that they would switch to Macs if they could do so painlessly.

This illustrates the principle that word of mouth is not enough. Word of mouth is only powerful because it gets people past the decision blocks that conventional marketing is not effective with. Issues having to do with experience, credibility, simplification, subtle interpretation, reassurance, encouragement and real-world practical nuts and bolts. Advertising, sales people and other conventional marketing methods do not work very well on marketing blocks that involve these issues. Friends, colleagues, experts and advisers are much more helpful in these areas.

Now, there is a gradual way to switch to the Mac, as I’ve described in previous posts.

My analysis of the Mac decision map has revealed many blocks. The biggest one is the lack of a way to try OS X and to switch to it gradually. This new development is important because it wipes out these blocks.

Word of mouth ultimately wins. Blatantly inferior products like Windows, GM and Ford cars, AT&T and Verizon long distance telephone service ultimately lose because information transmitted independently through word of mouth will ultimately overwhelm (in both credibility and quantity) slick ads. It doesn’t matter how big the company is. Especially when those ads are insulting to customers. (For instance, depicting them as dinosaurs, as Microsoft does.) These were, and are, the largest companies in the world. It doesn’t matter. Google may be headed in the same direction. People love telling other people about new and better search engines, and the cost for switching is very low. For instance, ask.com and accoona.com have been mentioned to me many times in the last week and I’m actively trying them out, even though I love Google.

The cost of switching to Apple has always been high, until now.

The takeaway here is to keep your eye on the steps that people need to go through in the decision process. This will reveal all sorts of blocks and opportunities that will allow you to have very high prediction accuracy.

Oh, yes, the predictions. The necessity to reboot when switching between OS X and Windows is a huge block. My guess is that it will not take more than a few weeks, given the enormous interest shown, to develop a switching program that does not require a reboot. In fact, it may already be here. Today’s Wall Street Journal mentions a beta program called Parallels that purports to do this.

I predict that GM and Ford will continue to take themselves into deeper holes before desperation causes them to take some very bold moves. First there will be the corporate financial moves, which may bring them breathing room but will do nothing for their sales. Then there will be some dramatic product quality moves. I have no way of predicting whether these moves will be too little or too late. I am very pessimistic, because the only thing that will save them is to turn around word of mouth. But they don’t even begin to understand what word of mouth is, as evidenced by the Tahoe CGM campaign. They’re just using word of mouth as another manipulation. They need to bring in the customer by having the customer help them design the car, not the ads. They need to openly and transparently share their commitment and steps to solving the product quality problems.

That’s what Apple did. They paid attention to the enormous desire of their customers to be able to run Windows on their Macs for the few programs that cannot be translated to OS X. The announcement released an almost overwhelming torrent of word of mouth. Sales will go through the roof because the solution is already “good enough” and will only get better.
Another prediction: there will be an enormous fight the other way around. People will get OS X working on Windows boxes. This will probably unleash a gigantic fight from Apple. While I believe that they should have the right to attach any conditions to the sale of their programs, this would be a mistake. They could sell a huge number of operating systems without the machines. This would result in huge incremental profit. Since they always seem to be able to stay ahead of the other machines in features, quality and attitude, they would compete very well on the boxes, too. But only if they stay the “good guy” and don’t turn people against them by coercive actions.

Give the people what they want, don’t fight their desires and their WOM, empower them to go the next steps and don’t set up obstacles to what they are going to do anyway. So far, so good.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
www.mnav.com      wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: Word-of-mouth marketing, Marketing, Apple, WOMM

Windows will now boot on a Mac

The contest for putting Windows on a Mac that I posted about here has been won. Details here.

The implications are enormous, on many levels. First of all, it shows that a desirable outcome can be encouraged by a very interesting kind of word of mouth: user, customer, consumer initiated contests or incentives.

Also, it shows that products will get modified, even if the customers don't know how to do it themselves.

As I've written about before, and spoken about at the WOMMA Orlando conference, this is a very big step for Apple. Now that Windows can be run on the Mac, there is little reason for people not to switch to Macs, the clearly superior machine and operating system. They can now do so gradually, and have Windows for any custom programs (or games) they may have to run.

I hope Apple doesn't fight this development. It's the best thing that has happened to them since the return of Steve Jobs and the launch of the iPod & iTunes.

I will we awaiting further developments before switching. I'll wait for some software to catch up to run natively on the MacIntel machines. Also, the Windows installation has to be simple and seamless, preferably without a re-boot. Most importantly, I have to make sure that Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking will work on the WinMac. Since it makes calls to the chip, it is not obvious that it will work. I use Dragon to do my more lengthy writing of long articles and books. There is nothing remotely close on the Mac. Everything else is better on a Mac.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
www.mnav.com wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: Apple, Marketing, WOMMA, Word-of-mouth marketing

A new word-of-mouth phenomenon that could shake the world

I’ve been following an interesting contest, but realized that it has wider, Earth-shaking implications.

Here's the contest, posted by a guy named Colin. See if you can see its wider consequences:

“My new Apple MacBook is shipping .... I told my boss that this would replace my IBM desktop and I could boot Windows XP on it. I am still confident it can be done. I am giving $100 of my own money and offering anyone else who would like the instructions on how to Dual boot these two operating systems the ability to give some of their money into the pot as a prize for the person / group that can make dual-booting Mac OS X and Windows XP happen on an Intel Mac. Good Luck, Colin” (Rules and other details follow) Boot Windows XP on an Intel Duo Core Mac and Make Money

This is an example of a ‘solution contest.’ There have been several very famous ones in the past:

• The Wright Brothers’ first flight was actually part of a worldwide contest for powered flight (there were 3 rules: powered, controlled, landing the same altitude or higher). Everyone knew it was about to happen, and about when it was going to happen. It was a worldwide race.
• During WWII, there was an “inventions needed” list of over 300 crucial things that we needed. Most of them were invented.
• There was a Friday meeting at the Manhattan Project. People would get up and say what they needed. If anyone else knew how to do it, or who was likely to be able to do it, they got up and volunteered the information. If the solution was outside the project, people were flown to find the inventor and bring the “volunteer” back to Los Alamos under military escort.

Do you see the new implications of the “Windows on an Intel Mac” contest?

It’s a “Consumer Generated Contest.” CGC (You heard it here first — I’m looking for a better name). Its implications can be HUGE. A customer has stepped up and put up $100 into a PayPal account, inviting others to join in and contribute. Within a few weeks, it climbed to over $12,000, and got worldwide coverage in the blogs and technology press. Also, someone stands to make a lot of money from marketing the solution itself. As I’ve written before, it would cause sales of Macs to multiply.

But the point is: here’s a customer who has no vested interest other than a desire for the product, stepping up and starting a fund for something he wants.

I think it’s only the first and that it will start a major trend.

This got me wondering: what would you gladly contribute $100 or more to encourage the invention of? Don’t be too fast to say things like, “cure for Cancer, Diabetes, etc., solution to Global Warming, alternative to Oil, etc.” These BIG PROBLEMS would require almost impossible-to-define rules, the incentives are already up and running, a PayPal pot is unlikely to increase the motivation of people already motivated by a variety of incentives, throwing more money of any kind is not likely to increase the probability of a solution. Anyone solving these problems would get the Nobel Prize, plus plenty of others.

CGCs are for a certain type of problem:

• Middle-level
• Clearly definable
• Clearly “in the sights.” Something we know is inevitable, imminent. We can taste it. Our mouths are watering. We would pre-order it right now on Amazon (a metaphor).
• Something where the additional incentive pot is likely to motivate people to invest their resources in developing a solution
• Something for which adding to the incentive IN ADVANCE would be attractive to a large number of people

They may be hacks to existing products. I would have paid in advance for a way to defeat Verizon’s removal of Bluetooth Dial Up Networking to my Treo (already developed), how to defeat the inability to program the Prius’ navigation system while the car is moving (already posted), and many others.

They may be accessories, new products, utilities, etc.

Are there a lot of these? Is it worth building a web site to encourage them?

Think about it:

What would you eagerly contribute $100 in advance to a PayPal pot to see developed?

Just to make it real, make it something that you would actually put up the money for, right now, if I set up the contest.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
www.mnav.com''''' wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: Word-of-mouth marketing, Marketing, Apple, WOMM