George Silverman's Word-of-Mouth Marketing Blog

A Great Word-of-Mouth Campaign makes it easy, simple & fun for the customer

Here’s an excellent example of making decisions easy for the customer, mostly through Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

I just got this email from an architect friend who also has a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology, so I paid attention.

I haven't made up my mind yet. But I sure love bold problem-solving and a guy who will put his money where his mouth is. Regardless of where you stand on this, you've got to admire a really well-done WOM campaign!

Study this campaign, and follow it as it progresses. if it works, it will change the world and compress what would have taken 50 years into only a few. Can you incorporate these elements into your campaign? Don’t be so quick to say that you aren’t a famous billionaire. There are elements here that you can use.

- - - - - - - - -

George:

I encourage you to watch the video and join the "Pickens Plan Army" (no costs).
This guy has the clout and ambition to make alternative energy a real option for the US in the near future.
We all need to support this and every effort to get away from foreign oil ASAP.
Please help!
[Initials redacted]

To: [redacted] Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:49:03 -0700 Subject: 60 Minutes and the Pickens Plan From: [email protected] Boone here, Last night 60 Minutes did a segment on our plan. If you didn't see it, click here to watch. Be sure to send the link to your friends. I think it does a good job of describing the plan and will help us get more members in the army. - Boone

• Pickens obviously did something right to capture the email addresses of high-level people like my friend and got his permission to send emails.

• He had a vision, something different, something lofty.
• He became the face of it.
• He invested emotionally as much as financially, and shows it.
• That passion is contagious.
• They motivated high level people to send it out to their friends.
• They made their product/product category into a “cause.”
• They got the implied endorsement of 60 Minutes.
• He sends short, personal emails, asking for pass-along.
• He asks for specific actions, but keeps it simple and easy.
• In fact, at every step he makes the complex simple, easy and interesting.

The list goes on and on.

Assuming that the technology is sound, this is a winning campaign.

Are you being subtly obnoxious?

Sometimes, exerting a little pressure on customers to get them to use your services again seems perfectly reasonable from the company's point of view.

From a recent Hilton email:

.. But Time is Running Out

We don't want to lose you as a valued member. Please act by [Date] 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, click here.

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.

To which they replied:

As long as you keep your account active by recording at least one eligible point earning activity every 12 months, your HHonors points will not expire. However, should you go more than 12 months without recording any eligible activity, your account will be deactivated and your accumulated point balance will be forfeited. If you do not have an activity, your account will be automatically closed due to inactivity.

If you have any further questions regarding your HHonors account, please let me know.

Bee
Hilton Reservations and Customer Care
2050 Chennault Drive
Carrolton, TX 75001

To which I replied:

Thanks for responding personally.

If you knew how arbitrary, threatening and non-customer-oriented that sounds, you would not do it or say it. It's so bad that I'm going to use it as an example of bad customer policies and communication in my blog and my speeches. Thanks for the material.

Here's the communication that I would have liked to have received. Wouldn't this have been better?

Dear Mr. Silverman,

We noticed that you haven't stayed at a Hilton for a while. Is this just an accidental byproduct of naturally fluctuating travel patterns, has our competition provided something better, or did we do something that you are not happy with? While we usually close down inactive accounts after a year of inactivity, if you click on this link to tell us to keep it open, we will be happy to do so. But more importantly, if there is anything that we can improve or rectify, I want to hear about it so that I can personally intervene to make it right.

We know that it is very hard to get new customers but it is very easy to lose them. While our business is formally called the hospitality business, we know that we are in the happiness business. We are passionate about constantly improving our level of hospitality and your happiness. Please take a moment to tell me what we can do better, no matter how ambitious or how minor it may seem from your perspective. Our legendary level of service comes from two things: a few occasional major breakthroughs and hundreds of minor improvements. Many of these come from customer suggestions, even though our professionals literally stay up nights figuring out improvements. We don't just say that you are a “valued member.” As you will see if you take the trouble to jot down a few thoughts, we take your happiness seriously and will demonstrate to you just how valuable we consider your patronage.

Bee, your personal customer advocate.

BTW, call me at -------- if you want to talk about this personally.

-------------------------------

Some hotel firms, other firms, actually do send letters like this -- and mean it. They follow up, make things right, provide personal service and don't send out form letters.

By the way, I have no gripe about Hilton Hotels. My last stay at a DoubleTree in LA was wonderful. Too bad they had to ruin it with bad corporate communications. Come to think of it, I've gone more than a year on occasion without staying at a Marriott. They never cancelled my account.

customer_service, marketing

Word of Mouth -- without words and without mouths!

Implied WOM -- Here's a case where it's more important than explicit WOM

The Olympic swimming competition is providing a great example of what I call “Implied Word of Mouth.”
The current flurry of Olympic gold medals and world records in swimming is being attributed in large part to the new Speedo LZR swimsuits.

— 38 world records have been broken since its introduction in February until June, before the Olympic qualifiers and Olympics, not counting all the Olympic trial and Olympic records.
In fact, as of this writing, here’s some information that Speedo has on its website:

They have an endorsement deal with Michael Phelps. That’s an obvious use of paid word of mouth.
More importantly — and often neglected by people who are thinking about word of mouth — is the implied endorsement by all of the swimmers, many of them previously non-contenders, as they win medals and smash world records.

Adding to the situation is the controversy around whether the suits constitute “technological doping.” Swimmers and Speedo are being accused of using technology — rather than athletic ability and training — to give athletes an artificial edge, much like using performance-enhancing drugs.

It is just about the ideal word of mouth situation:

1. A wildly superior, unusual product.
2. Easy to talk about the product as a whole.
3. A technology story that is easy to describe, thereby giving a “reason to believe.”
4. An overall story that is easy to tell, even in headline form. (“New Kind of Swimsuit Shatters World Records” Better for the Company: “New Kind of Swimsuit Makes Even Mediocre Swimmers Win Races.”
5. Celebrity endorsements. Some paid, others spontaneous.
6. Implied endorsements by everyone who is seen on the Olympics wearing one, especially medalists and world-record breakers. [Note: This is the original meaning of “viral marketing”: a product whose very use is an implied recommendation by those who use it. It was originally used for HotMail, which had at the bottom something like: “Sent by HotMail. Want a free email account? Go to Hotmail.com”)]
7. Controversy, generating buzz, that reflects well on them. After all, if the suits were not effective, there would be no accusations of unfairness.
8. An amazing website (Speedousa.com). It is simple, uncluttered, fun, and allows you to find anything you want on a very information-packed website with only an obvious click or two. Their explanations are simple, yet informative. There are a few problems: they have a fun “Virtual Model” section in which you can construct someone who looks like you, and then try on various kinds of swimwear (when did “bathing suits” become “swimwear”?). Unfortunately, all of the avatars are under 30.
More importantly, they have so many fabrics and lines that they need a comparison chart or a decision tool where you can enter info, such as whether you are a competitive swimmer, where you will use the swimwear, etc. and it makes recommendations. Like many of the sites that help you pick a camera or a television set.
9. A product that is not yet available to the public, but will be soon, thereby building desire for something you can’t have. By the way, a full swimsuit will cost around $550, with leggings costing just $350, and trunks just $290. But don’t worry, they have models that are almost as good, especially for the non-competitive swimmer. By the time you check out other models, their $100 and $50 swim trunks begin to look cheap.
10. There are dozens of other little and large issues around their product lines, website, attitudes, innovative spirit, etc. that make this a marketing situation well worth studying. I’ve barely begun to look into this company, and already I’m bowled over.

Yes, but...

Note to any companies that are tempted to say, “Yes, but we are not Speedo,” or, “Yes, but we have a mundane product,” let me respectfully remind you of several things: First of all, stop saying “Yes, but…” Then, remember that they were a swim trunk manufacturer. There is nothing more mundane than that. Then, they were the first to use Lycra® in swimwear in 1972. Then, a series of innovations in all areas of sportswear followed that. To get WOM, you have to be EXTRA-ordinary.

The REALLY important lesson here:

Okay, here is your reward for reading this far: All of the above is an example of a much more important and broader concept: Decision Simplification. Speedo has made the brand choice decision into that Holy Grail of marketing: a no-brainer. If you want to buy a swimsuit and want the very best, the decision is now simple — a decision so simple that no time or effort has to be spent on it by busy people (everybody!). If you are an affluent and aspirational buyer of sportswear, what are you going to buy yourself or your kids? Simple. The suit that Michael Phelps and every other medalist and world record holder wears.

Many people have gone from only a dim awareness of the brand to the belief that Speedo makes the best swimwear. When they go to their website, they find out that they make a broad line of sportswear and accessories.

It doesn’t make a bit of difference if Speedo doesn’t make any money on the new swimsuits. They have, after all, put a huge amount of R&D into its development. They have now out-Niked Nike, the masters of the actual and implied endorsement. They have demonstrated in the most rigorous environment that their particular clothes actually enhance performance. I’m not aware that anyone else has done that, at least so convincingly and so publicly.

This particular formula for Decision Simplicity is simple to understand, but hard to do: Make a smashingly superior, astonishing product and get everybody to use it visibly because of the edge that it gives them. They don’t actually have to say a word about it, although they will. Of course, you might have to put in some R&D that will make the bean counters go crazy.

What this means to you

If you can make a product that actually enhances the performance of something your customers do (why make it if it doesn’t?), you are making your customers into a personal champion and making them feel better about themselves. They will brag about it. They will wear your logo.

Also, get the leaders in your customers’ line of work to visibly use it. Get them involved in its development, get their continual feedback, stir up the good kind of controversy and competition, make it something whose name and logo they are proud to display. It’s worked for Speedo, Nike, Canon, Nikon, Leica, Apple and many, many other brands that you’ve never heard of because they are in obscure and technical areas. But, I could name plenty of other brands in windsurfing, magic, photography, surgery and medical devices. There is room in your area, even if you’re getting clobbered by a Nike at the moment.

Here's another idea: Maybe you should run an “Olympics” in your category. For instance, if I made voice dictation software and it was the fastest on the market, I would run a contest for the fastest “typist” (sounds better than “dictator”) in the world. They could type or use voice dictation. Since the fastest typist in the world types about 160 words per minute, and I can easily hit that with my present voice dictation system, the champion would be widely acknowledged to be the fastest in the world, using my software. My guess is it would be over 200 words a minute, using my software. This would be a real contest that actually demonstrates the superiority of my product dramatically, instead of the stupid, artificial contests that are usually run.

How can you take advantage of implied word of mouth?

Technorati Tags: Customer Decision Experience, Marketing, Decision Simplification, WOMM, Womworthy products, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

Technorati Tags: Customer Decision Experience, Decision Simplification, Marketing, WOMM, Womworthy products, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

Technorati Tags: Customer Decision Experience, Decision Simplification, Marketing, WOMM, Womworthy products, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

16 Questions to ask yourself when listening to customers

Marketers listen to lots of focus groups. But they don't always know what to listen for. In the past, I have provided long checklists, but to experienced people, the lists probably come across as either a little condescending (that means talking down to people — just kidding!), unnecessary or — on the other side of it — a little bit overwhelming.

When people ask themselves questions, they are automatically at their own level and rarely take it as an insult. So, here's a list of “16 Questions to ask yourself while listening to a focus group.”

1. What's the underlying, perhaps hidden, theme here? (There's ALWAYS an underlying theme.)
2. What can I learn from the misconceptions or otherwise “wrong” responses?
3. Are the quiet participants and inarticulate remarks conveying some hidden treasures?
4. What are the silences, pauses, chuckles, body language, voice tonality and other “background” cues trying to tell us?
5. Are we learning anything from their persistent refusal to get off a particular topic and got on to what WE think is important?
6. Are my prior experiences — and, yes, even prejudices — preventing me from learning something about that person I'm tending to write off?
7. How does what I'm hearing relate to the previous groups? Are there any trends that can only be understood in the context of multiple groups?
8. Since emotions are the signals of values (i.e., what's important), what are the emotions signaling us, particularly anything with emotional heat around it — passion, anger, resentment, awe, fear, etc.
9. Why doesn't the moderator move on? Since the moderator is a trained professional, is the moderator perhaps noticing something or going after something that is beneath the surface? Is the strange behavior, redundancy and persistence of the moderator perhaps attempting to get beyond superficial verbalization, rationalization and other defenses? Or, should the moderator move on and accept people's analysis of their own behavior? (Okay this isn't really a question.)
10. Given my vast experience in this product category, what unique perspectives can I bring to the table?
11. Rather than looking for the ONE RIGHT ANSWER, are there multiple answers: different kinds of customers, different customer needs, different perspectives that all legitimate?
12. Can the bitching, moaning and complaints of the participants be turned into a product that solves the problems? Is there an iPod hiding in the complaints about how disorganized their music collections are?
13. How can I fix it? How can I solve it? How can I improve an already great situation so they'll rave about it?
14. What are the breakthrough solutions rather than the tiny improvements?
15. What are the word-of-mouth implications for what I'm hearing. What are they telling their friends? What could I change to get them to rave to their friends?
16. What am I NOT hearing? Why?

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

Focus groups, Marketing Research

David Pogue wonders about the Macintosh Surge

David Pogue has recently attempted to explain the Macintosh Surge, and solicited opinions about it:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/explaining-the-macintosh-surge/

The comments, hundreds of them!, are a primer on WOM and should be read by anyone interested in WOM.

(Those of you who go to the WOMMA conventions: remember when I got up and challenged the Vista product manager to give me a single reason to switch to Vista, instead of a contest to win a trip to the moon!)

In part, here's what he says:

At the risk of enraging the Apple bashers, I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer: Something is going on with the Macintosh.

At this week’s Macworld Expo, there were 475 exhibitors. That’s 100 more booths than last year.

There were 50,000 attendees. That’s 10,000 more people than last year.

A book publisher told me that 2007 Macintosh book sales were up by double-digit leaps over the previous year.

Gartner’s fourth-quarter 2007 research shows that Mac shipments grew 28 percent over the year before, giving it an 6.1 percent market share. (It was 3-point-something only a couple of years ago.)

According to Net Applications, use of the Mac’s Web browser, Safari, climbed 32 percent in 2007.

Apple sold 2.16 million Macs in the last quarter–a new company record.

And anecdotally—well, you probably know somebody who’s switched to the Mac recently.

What is going on?

He rejects the IPod (and by implication iPhone) halo effects.

He rejects the “fed up with viruses and spyware” argument.

He says that the best theory is “Windows Vista.” “When people found out they’d have to buy a new computer and learn a new interface, a certain slice of them just said, ‘Well, if I have to buy a new machine and learn a new interface, I may as well get the cool-looking, virus-free one.’

He goes on to ask, ”But could that effect explain this gigantic 35 percent leap in just 12 months? It’s still an expensive proposition to switch platforms once you’ve got an investment in software and peripherals.

Anyone else got a better theory?“

What he didn't mention:

He and other gurus now openly support the Mac.

A HUGE increase in the Mac notebook share of market.

The ability for Macs to co-exist on Windows networks.

The seamless integration between the iPhone and/or iPods, email programs, iPhoto, ITunes, IMovie, iCal (the Mac calendar).

Some programs that are Mac-only that are so good that it's worth switching for them. For me, they are DevonThink Pro (a free-form database that you can dump all your info into and retrieve with artificial intelligence -- and a whole lot more) and Scrivener, an authoring program for articles, scripts and books that goes light years beyond word processing by separating info gathering, writing and formatting into totally separate processes. Quicksilver -- the most useful program I've ever used that is so all-purpose that I can't even describe it adequately. (But, here's a try: with a couple of keystrokes, it lets me instantaneously find any file, move it, open it, launch programs, add text to files without even opening them, send emails, look up phone numbers, plus dozens of other things without even thinking.) Plus, Keynote is way better than PowerPoint. Plus some technically advanced photography programs that I can't even go into.

in addition, the upcoming arrival (which he did mention in another post) of MacSpeech Dictate, the super-accurate speech recognition program, and the even better implementation of Microsoft Word 2008 on the Mac than Word 2007 on Windows itself! also make the Mac much more attractive, and well worth the learning curve.

Here's my take:

His premise is wrong. He is looking for something that has recently changed to explain it all.

PC vs. Mac is the largest word-of-mouth disparity that I have found in decades of studying word of mouth. I've been predicting this surge for years because nothing can withstand the degree of negative word of mouth that Windows and Microsoft have, especially against such a positive WOM alternative.

As I've reported before, when I give a speech and talk about this, I ask the audience how many people use Windows. Then I ask, knowing what they know now, how many of them think they would switch to a Mac for their next machine if it were feasible to run their Windows programs, or make an easy switch, if it didn't cost them much in money or time. At least 80% of them say they would, if their companies would only let them. This much pent-up demand is screaming to be satisfied.

But for the first time, it's becoming ever more easily satisfied.

What has held it back is that Apple has ”knowledge blindness“ and doesn't understand how onerous people imagine the switch to be. Apple doesn't understand that most people don't even know what an operating system is, and don't want to. Apple doesn't understand all the things they could be doing to ease the switch and think they are doing all they can.

The ”Tipping Point“ is arriving.

Gradually, these decision barriers have been coming down. Required, legacy Windows programs can be run on the Mac, so businesses can use it. Famous Windows mavins, and regular IT people are encouraging their non-geek spouses, children, friends and grandmothers to buy Macs, so they don't have to be bothered by phone calls. The technology mavins like Pogue  himself and Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal have finally come out of the closet and no longer afraid to say that the Mac is much better. The Mac kids are growing up. The last few areas missing Mac programs, such as voice recognition and GPS mapping, now have Mac alternatives, often better ones. And now, they keep hearing how easy it all is to switch. Apple is porting over files from PCs at Apple stores. More complete switching support would be even better, but it's coming along. Apple stores themselves have revolutionized retailing. More of people's friends are able to offer support, as are stores and consultants. Apple offers a $99 one-year series of private, weekly lessons in how to do YOUR things on the Mac. It's turned many people I know from people who hate the computer, to people who have fun on it and produce cool things that spread the word of mouth.

Example: My wife -- who barely tolerated and rarely used her Windows computer -- has been having a ball doing the things she is learning in those lessons. She has produced our Holiday cards on it, stunning picture and all. Of course, on the back of each card, it says ”Made on a Mac“ (which could have been optionally removed, but we are Mac fans).

Gradually, the word of mouth is reaching critical mass, so that a large number of people keep hearing from people they know and trust that the switch will be painless and supported. In addition, they keep seeing all the cool things that their friends can do: the movies, greeting cards, coffee-table picture books, web sites, picture galleries, etc.

So, the answer, David, in summary, is that you are seeing a surge now because of the exponential effects of word of mouth. At some point, it reaches critical mass, then everyone asks, ”what's new,“ looks around for an event, and points to the most obvious or most proximal. There is no single event. The so-called ”tipping point“ is made possible by all of these events, plus the removal of most of the under-appreciated barriers to switching.

Apple creates WOMworthy products (spectacularly simple, elegant yet powerful) that makes people feel very good about themselves, creating word of mouth. AND -- the reason that the geeks don't understand -- we are reaching the point where real people are viewing the switch as less onerous. What technical people see as an adventure and ”not a problem“ is becoming actually just about tolerable and only minimally painful for the rest of the world..

At some point WOM grows exponentially, so look for the surge to turn into an explosion in Mac sales at some point in the very near future, if Apple doesn't get too arrogant and shoot itself in the foot, which it could easily do, since it is product oriented (in the best sense) rather than people oriented. When they make mistakes, that's where they tend to make them.

One last point. Imagine what would happen if the Mac OS could run Windows programs natively, without virtualization software and without Windows. Apple would take over the market overnight.

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: Apple, Marketing, Womworthy products, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

Beware the Oracles

Listening to the pundits speculate about why the polls failed to predict the Clinton win in New Hampshire, why they had prematurely counted out McCain, Huckabee and Obama, why they had paid so much attention to Thompson and why they can’t call the nominees yet, has caused me to think about experts and expertise, particularly in marketing.

The presidential elections are intensely competitive, often interactive, marketing campaigns. As such, they fascinate me.

For once, the political pundits were talking about something that I know a lot more about than they do. They were talking about marketing research, even though they talked in terms of polls and elections, rather than surveys and purchases. Polls = surveys and elections = a purchase, or product selection. What’s different is that in elections, the products talk (I know, the analogy breaks down with Elmo).

What was amazing to me is that there were the pundits doing exactly the same thing as marketing executives, agency executives and consultants that I have been observing for decades. They blindly project past behavior and intentional data (what people say they will do) into the future. They are very, very often wrong. But they are highly paid, so they have to look right. So what do they do? They make up plausible stories.

Sometimes, they even go out and find the data that will back up their stories. What’s going on here?

The network’s producers call up an expert who they are about to book for a show. They ask that expert what he/she thinks. Producers are not going to provide an airplane and limousine to the studio for an expert who was simply going to say, “we just don’t know.” They want people with definite opinions, strongly held. They want controversy. They want plausibility. The pundits are all too willing to provide that. They spin out plausible explanations with great certainty.

The same is true with the marketing pundits, when they are making predictions.

I’m standing up, like that little boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes, and telling you there’s nothing there. They don’t have a clue.

Not when they’re explaining the past or predicting the future or describing the present. Why? Because there is much more that they don’t know than they do know. Furthermore, they don’t know it, because if they knew it, they would know it. You don’t know what you don’t know. So, while do you know that you don’t know some things, you severely underestimate the things that you don’t know.

So, they are saying things like the Clinton voters showed up in greater numbers than were expected because they were angered by other candidates ganging up on Hillary, or because of Hillary’s becoming choked up. Never mind that this was not reflected in the exit polls. They quote their mothers, their friends, or passersby in the streets.

The actual experts in polling, who are, for the most part, pretty dull and therefore don’t make it to television interviews, are saying that it was probably the Bradley effect (blacks do worse in the actual elections and they do in the polls), or the fact that lower income people to not like to be interviewed and have a higher refusal rate, and favor Clinton. They would be likely to refuse both polls prior to the election, and exit polls. These, to me, are the most likely explanations, but they are not as politically correct as other explanations. Notice that I said “most likely.” The so-called experts rarely use this or equivalent phrases. The fact is, that we don’t know, and may never know.

So, what are we to do? In politics, we have to make predictions. In business, we have to make forecasts. One very successful marketing vice president, who came up from marketing research, when I asked him once about forecasting said, “give them a date, and give them a number, but never, ever at the same time.”

I used to be asked, “Based on the focus groups, will the product be successful?” I suspect that my answers were rather disappointing. Now, I am never asked that question because I make it clear beforehand that focus groups and surveys can’t predict a product’s success, although they can sometimes predict a product’s failure when there is a fundamental flaw in the product. There are just too many things that have to go right for success. For instance, there is no way to predict what competitors will do. What if an iPod or an iPhone comes along? What if you are Alta Vista, doing a great job, and a Google comes along?

There are last-moment, decisive factors that hit people when they are in the privacy of the voting booth, or are about to click their product choice, or standing at the shelf in the store.

People do not know what they are going to do. They don’t know what they will buy or not buy (or vote). They do not know how strongly held their preferences are. They do not know “what it would take to get you to buy the product,” a favorite, stupid question that marketers like to ask. Or, “On a scale of one to 10, 1 being least likely and 10 being certain, how likely are you to vote for your previous choice.?” (Who says there are no stupid questions?)

If people (including pollsters) can’t predict their own behavior, how do you think they’re going to predict others’?

So, what can focus groups, polls and surveys tell us? They can tell us about many obvious and hidden attitudes, opinions, beliefs, wishes, fears, etc. that may need to be addressed. They can tell us, for instance, that people are frustrated because their music libraries are a mess. They can tell us that the iTunes/iPod system of keeping them organized addresses that frustration. They can’t tell you that these will displace the ubiquitous Walkmans and CD players. They can’t tell you that these will take over the music industry.

They can’t tell you that an obscure Arkansas governor (Bill Clinton) can go up against a wildly popular president who just won the Gulf War (1), who the Democrats were despairing about running against, and who had lost the first primaries, could go on to win the presidency.

The Taurus, wildly popular in its time, was ridiculed as a “jelly bean” in focus groups. The VW bug, as well as its revived version decades later, was also ridiculed, but found its niche, who probably weren’t well represented in the surveys and focus groups. Respondents loved the Edsel and New Coke.

The Oracles are frauds. Predicting is a con game. Historians are fiction writers. Stock pickers are just racetrack touts. Forecasting is only on target by chance. Get it?

Sometimes, you just have to refine your guesses by marketing research, then put them out into the marketplace and let reality decide.

The main lesson: Clues are clues. Reality is reality. Sometimes they coincide. Sometimes… You get the picture.

Technorati Tags: Focus groups, Marketing, Marketing Research

Using Online Networks for Market Research Can Be Dangerous

In an article last Monday in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Emily Steel described the growing trend of using online social networks -- both existing and company-encouraged -- for marketing research. It's a very dangerous trend, as I point out in my letter to her. Many companies are headed for disaster if they give undue weight to the opinions expressed on their online networks.

Emily,

Very much enjoyed your article The New Focus Groups: Online Networks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120027230906987357.html?mod=djemMM

However, it didn't cover the major pitfalls, of which there are many. (Full disclosure: I am a marketing consultant who runs face-to-face focus groups and telephone focus groups. I'm a founder of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association and member of its Professionalism Committee, although I am speaking officially for neither.)

I have rejected the methodology of online groups for reasons enumerated in detail in the following article:

http://www.mnav.com/onlinetablesort.htm

In brief, the written word does not allow for the reading of emotions that live focus groups do, and the reading of these emotions is absolutely necessary for the interpretation of the results. (E.g., How enthusiastic are they? Are they hesitant? Are their remarks ironic and sarcastic? Are they coming from their heads or hearts? Are they mildly annoyed or royally pissed off?)

However, these kinds of standing panels have a problem that I didn't discuss in the article. It is one of sample bias. As you describe, people are continually dropping out of the group and being replenished. This severely skews the kind of people who remain in the panel, in ways that are virtually impossible to account for in interpreting the findings. It is well known that participators are radically different than non-participators and ex-participators. For instance, probably the more enthusiastic and/or more lonely people (including social misfits) tend to stay in. So, you keep the enthusiasts, for whom the panel becomes a part of their social life (as mentioned in your article). They are sometimes less prone to criticize, but sometimes more prone to criticize. The point is, one never knows. But as this sample becomes more and more distorted and unrepresentative of real customers, you have a disaster waiting to happen.

On the other hand, these panels are a wonderful source of ideas and a way to make sure that certain actions and wording do not antagonize loyal customers.. But they are notoriously unpredictive of success in the marketplace. The Edsel automobile and New Coke are but two of many examples of going to the wrong people and asking the wrong questions. Many of the .com failures were guided by discussions on company forums, forgetting that most real people to not hang out on forums, especially for prolonged periods of time.

I hope that, as a reporter, you will follow this phenomenon. You will have many juicy disasters to cover. When you ask, “What were they thinking and why were they thinking it?” I hope that you will keep this letter in mind when they tell you “That's what our customers told us they wanted.”

Best regards,

George

George Silverman
President and Founder,
Market Navigation, Inc.
Word of Mouth Consultants

Author of “The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger
Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth” AMACOM
http://www.mnav.com/wombook.htm

Technorati Tags: Focus groups, Marketing, WOMMA

Sometimes you want to tell everybody! Why?

Here is an old joke, that I’m not telling for the humor. I’m telling it to make a point.

An elderly man goes into confession and says to the priest, “Father, I'm 80 years old, married, have four kids and 11 grandchildren, and last night I had an affair. I made love to two 21 year old girls. Both of them. Twice.”

The priest said: “Well, my son, when was the last time you were in confession?”

“Never Father, I'm Jewish.”

“So then, why are you telling me?”

“Are you kidding? I'm telling everybody!”

When you understand what is driving that man, you will understand more about marketing than you can possibly learn in all the marketing books put together. More about this in future blog posts, but there is breaking news that I want to “tell everybody!.”

On Tuesday, at MacWorld, a product was officially announced that I have been beta testing. This releases me to talk about some details that have been publicly revealed, although I still can't talk about many of the other details.

MacSpeech has announced a completely new voice dictation product for the Mac. One that is so accurate that it can be used by professional writers.

For those of you who don’t know what voice dictation is, or who don't yet appreciate its significance, let me explain. Simply, you talk and your words magically appear on the screen, like in a science fiction movie.

I have been beta testing this new product for the last three weeks. While I have been publicly critical of MacSpeech’s previous product, iListen, this product, MacSpeech Dictate, just blows me away. It has sensational accuracy with only 5 minutes of training. That means that you can dictate into any program on the Mac and have your words appear.

Now I’m a pretty fast Dvorak typist, around 120 wpm.

But, when I'm writing books, articles and speeches, that's not fast enough, and my arms and hands get tired, even with the 1/16th lower finger movement that Dvorak typing requires (look it up). So I have written my last two books in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is a Windows program. At this point, with continual training and corrections, I've gotten it beyond 99.7% accuracy. But, I had to maintain a separate Windows machine to do it, which was a great inconvenience, and ruled out voice dictation when I traveled, when I do a lot of my writing.

Ever since it's been possible, I've been running Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my Mac. I has been an acceptable solution, even though it takes considerable memory resources, disk space, and central processing power. It also requires me to run Windows, putting me at considerable risk, even though I have a firewall, anti-spyware software, antivirus software, etc. Windows also requires constant maintenance, and is unstable, so it can't stay up for days and weeks on end like my Mac. I consider Windows to be an almost criminally unsafe product. Also, I have to continually transfer my dictation into whatever program I'm using, such as my word processor and my e-mail.

None of these drawbacks is terrible, but all of them together add up to considerable inconvenience. Like most Mac users, I can work much longer and conveniently on the Mac side of the machine. The Mac aesthetics are not just a matter of being pretty. The machine is much easier on the eyes, cutting down on fatigue, something that is almost never mentioned.

Then, I broke my arm skiing three weeks ago. I found myself totally dependent upon voice dictation, except that using the trackball to highlight text, copy and paste it was excruciating. In an extraordinary bit of coincidence, MacSpeech happened to send me a beta copy of their new program, MacSpeech Dictate, a couple of days after my accident. I was pretty skeptical, since I found their previous program unacceptable for sustained writing.

Even though some parts of it were still under development, it blew me away. (The MacSpeech people just revealed that it has licensed the Dragon NaturallySpeeking speech recognition engine, and is adapting it to the Mac. So, MacSpeech Dictate is using the Dragon voice recognition engine.) It also dictates right into my word processor, e-mail, writing program (Scrivener) and my blog post editor (Ecto). I can dictate so fast it's almost frightening. Steven Wright jokes that he got hurt in a speed-reading accident. I feel like I’m about to get injured in a speed writing accident.

What’s so important about writing fast? Time saving is the least of it.

It makes my writing better. The processes of writing and editing should be separated. With voice dictation, I can close my eyes or look at the ceiling and just think my thoughts without distraction. When I look at the screen, there are my thoughts! I can then go back and polish. This has made a dramatic difference in the quality of my writing. Anything that gets in the way of putting thoughts onto paper is a distraction and decreases the quality. With voice dictation finally accurate enough to use on the Mac, all I have to do is think the thought and it magically appears in whatever program I want. Nothing else gets in the way.

Furthermore, my typing speed is about 2-3 times faster, since I make virtually no mistakes and can dictate much faster than I can actually type. So, I can sail through my e-mail at dazzling speed.

This entire blog post was done with MacSpeech Dictate, with well over 99% accuracy.

I want to congratulate the folks at MacSpeech. They are a living lesson in word-of-mouth marketing. I was publicly critical of their previous product. Instead of ignoring me or getting defensive, they contacted me and asked if I would like to work with their technical support in increasing my accuracy. Their technical support put in hours increasing my accuracy, but still, the fundamental design of the program and how it made corrections was just was too unwieldy for me to use. I stayed on as a beta tester mostly on the strength of their Customer Evangelist's enthusiasm (thanks Chuck Rogers) and complete confidence that things would get better. What they couldn't tell me was that they were coming out with an entirely new program, based on Dragon.

They were so  customer oriented and enthusiastic about their product that I hung in there with them. As a result, I am now the poster boy for the expression “The biggest skeptic is the biggest convert.” I’m also going to tell thousands of people about the program via my speeches and blog, and demo it every chance I get. I can now also enthusiastically recommend the Mac, since it now has voice dictation. (I would never recommend that anyone but a very sophisticated user put Windows on a Mac.)

My arm is feeling better, but I won’t ever go back to Dragon NaturallySpeaking in Windows. Although I will leave Windows on my Mac just in case I need to run another Windows program, I really don't think I'm ever going to see Windows defacing my Mac ever again.

WHWL? (What have we learned?)

• if you've got the goods, stay with your strongest critics, work with them, acknowledge that they may be right, take their suggestions. You never know who they will tell, who they know, how many thousands of people they can reach.
• Get them involved in product improvement. It's very hard to be a net detractor for a product you have helped develop. They will, however, not be shy about criticizing you, usually constructively.
• Be straight with customers. Don't make believe your product is better than it is. if you tell the truth, you'll always be reality based and fix real things. If you distort, you'll be fantasy based and start believing your own fantasies. You will break a lot more than you will fix.
• Make your customers feel like that 80 year old guy. Well, as close as you can get. These days, people only talk about the sensational.

Breaking News: MacSpeech Dictate just received Best of Show at Macworld! Congratulations!

Oh, by the way, the new Apple announcements at Macworld are pretty good too, but you can read about them elsewhere.

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, WOMM, Womworthy products, Word-of-mouth marketing

I'm back

I have some good news for you

The publisher of my book “The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” wants a second edition. But that's not the good news for you. This time, they have agreed to let me use word-of-mouth marketing techniques to create and sell the book.

What this means to you is that I will be writing substantive revisions of the book as essays on this blog. I promise you that they will go way beyond what has been written on the subject so far.

In addition, I will be writing my new book, currently untitled, also on the blog. The premise of the book is that there is only one thing that marketers have to do to be successful, only one thing that organizes and forces you to do all of the other right things: help customers make the right decisions faster.

I will be doing all of this is a series of blog posts. That's one of the great things about blogging. I can write things as they occur to me, the way I usually do, and you can get the benefit without my having to worry about all of them hanging together, until the book is published.

You can also participate by making comments. We can refine and tune the ideas together, making for a much better book. You can use the ideas now, rather than waiting a year or two until official publication.

That's what's so wonderful about the New Marketing. Its participatory nature drives up the quality, while letting people get the benefits during the development process, or at least ensure that the eventual product is more suited to their needs.

This is like beta testing a new piece of software. I've recently been a beta tester for OmniFocus,  a spectacular new piece of software designed to keep track of projects and activities using the GTD system. I was struck by the extreme degree of cooperation between the developers and the beta testers. I'm experiencing another even greater example of that by beta testing another piece of software that has turned me around from what would have been an extreme skeptic, spreading negative word of the word of mouth, into a wild evangelist about the greatest piece of computer software ever developed. It's going to provide a spectacular example, once I can talk about it, hopefully in a week or two.

From time to time, I will organize the blog posts into essays and e-books or papers.

Before the book is published, I have permission to distribute it as a free e-book. We'll probably keep distributing it as a free, or very low cost e-book, even after publication.

It has been intensely frustrating to have to use conventional marketing and be precluded by contract from using my own principles.

In fact, it became so unbearable that when my publisher asked me to come up with a second addition I immediately came to the conclusion that I would do it on my own terms: either the publisher would have to agree to what conventional publishers just don't agree to, or I would write a completely new book and publish it myself. My agent said that there was no way a publisher would agree to publishing a book on the blog as it was being written, and giving it away as an e-book, other examples like Seth Godin and Bob Garfield notwithstanding.

About 10 minutes into the conversation, the publisher (I'm leaving out the details here until I get permission to use his name) agreed. Turns out, he was totally informed about what is going on in publishing today, and was eager to try this new approach. He just couldn't get an author who wanted to give away his own books. My agent and I practically had to be picked up off the floor. In fact, I actually said to the publisher, “I can't believe you're not giving me more of a fight here, how come?” He basically said that he knows where things are going and wants to try the new marketing, and why not with one of the leaders of the new marketing?

Anyway, it's going to be a blast.

Pass the word.

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

The secrets to Apple's success

Steve Chazin, a former Apple marketing and sales exec, has identified 5 of the things that make Apple such successful marketers.

This little  8 page eBook is absolutely brilliant.

He calls it MarketingApple: 5 Secrets of the World's Best Marketing Machine.

I believe that there is one, underlying thing that Apple is doing, and I wonder if Steve Jobs has realized it:

All of the great, wildly successful products, services, companies, institutions of the last decade or two have all done one thing at the root. They have helped the customer make Better Decisions Faster: not only faster in buying, using, recommending the product itself, but also helping the customer use that product to make better decisions faster in their lives.

For instance, Apple makes it faster to get on the Internet; operate a computer; organize, find, store, carry & access their music, photos, etc.

Amazon has done the same for books, eBay for collecting, Google for searching & reaching the customer at the exact point of interest, Yahoo for accessing certain types of content, Prius for making a certain social statement, Toyota in general for making it easy to buy a more reliable car, etc.

An the root of all successful marketing these days, is helping the customer make Better Decisions Faster. I have always been able to find several major ways to make it faster for your customers to decide on your product, if your product is the better decision.

When you enable customers to make better decisions faster, you accumulate customers faster, your customers get to be better users faster, they feel better about the whole experience, so they spread the word faster.

In the Age of Overload, time is more than money.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Customer Decision Experience, Marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

Surprise! Give 'em a little frisson to be Womworthy

Did you know that there is a hidden symbol in the FedEx logo?

It symbolizes speed and precision.

Once you see it, you can't not see it. I won't spoil the fun by pointing it out. If you don't know about it, stop here and look for it.

Yes, it's intentional. The designer, Lindon Leader, had some very interesting things to say about it.

What's this doing in a Word-of-Mouth blog? Glad you asked.

I was struck by the question that the logo designer says he is always asked:

“Why choose to keep the arrow so subtle? It seems to show remarkable restraint. Weren't you or the people at FedEx ever tempted to make it more obvious with an outline or a different color?”

It's so obvious that I might not have asked the question, but I'm glad the interviewer did:

He replied that the arrow is one of the most mundane graphic devices. There is nothing unique or particularly strategic, from a marketing point of view, in an arrow as a brand identifier.

Then Lindon went on to say,

The power of the hidden arrow is simply that it is a “hidden bonus.” It is a positive-reverse optical kind of thing: either you see it or you don’t. Importantly, not “getting the punch line” by not seeing the arrow, does not reduce the impact of the logo’s essential communication. The power of the logo and the FedEx marketing supporting the logo is strong enough to convey clearly FedEx brand positioning [Speed  & Precision]. On the other hand, if you do see the arrow, or someone points it out to you, you won’t forget it. I can’t tell you how many people have told me how much fun they have asking others “if they can spot ‘something’ in the logo.” To have filled in the arrow, or to somehow make it more “visible” would have been like Henny Youngman saying “Please take my wife” instead of “Take my wife. Please.” Punch lines that need to be explained are neither funny nor memorable. (Emphasis mine).

In other words, it's hidden, surprising, memorable, unusual. It's one of life's little pick-me-ups on an otherwise boring truck, envelope or uniform. So, it causes Word of Mouth. People like to point it out, or ask others to spot it. Like I'm doing now.

(FedEx did not pay for this ad. That's the point.)

I've always said that FedEx didn't succeed, as most business books state, because of its brilliant logistics breakthrough of sending the packages to a central point (Memphis), sorting there, then sending back out. They succeeded because they were beneficially unusual and constructively quirky Federal Express (as it was know in those days) told secretaries they would look good because they would positively, absolutely DELIVER overnight. In those days, it was as unusual as a customer-oriented phone company is today.

(This was the day that an iPhone customer got a 300 page bill, itemizing every text message, from AT&T, delivered in a box. No, not a FedEx box. I looked. Wouldn't that have been perfect?)

See it here:

or here:

YouTube Link

Was played on the network cable channels. How's that for WOM?

Via

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Womworthy products

What to focus on

Most companies focus on beating the competition. Apple focuses on ... well, let's let Steve Jobs say it:

Is Apple’s goal to overtake the PC in market share? Jobs said, “Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world and make products we are proud to sell and recommend to our family and friends. We want to do that at the lowest prices we can.

”But there’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship. And we just can’t do it. We can’t ship junk,“ said Jobs. ”There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. And we think that there’s a very significant slice of the [market] that wants that too. You’ll find that our products are not premium priced. You price out our competitors’ products, and add features that actually make them useful, and they’re the same or actually more expensive. We don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.“

This isn't a lot different than the official statements from many companies. The difference is that Jobs means it and lives it.

As quoted in MacWorld today. He was announcing the new ILife and IWork 08 suites.

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

Windows applications on Macs without Windows

Update: So far, the following prediction was wrong. [See the update at the end] I still think that it will be true, when Apple finally gets around to making their Leopard announcements. It was a big disappointment to not hear anything about Mac at MacWorld Expo. Maybe instead of renaming Apple Computer to Apple (which was one of their “big” announcements at MacWorld), they should rename MacWorld Expo to iWorld or iPod Expo. Did they forget about the Mac?

I have long been writing and speaking about the Mac as the product that has the worst word of mouth to sales ratio, probably in the history of marketing. In other words, it probably has the best word of mouth of any present product. Yet, as of this writing, it only has 7% of the computer market. I often use it as an example of the fact that we have to curb our enthusiasm when we start talking about word of mouth overriding all other marketing considerations. In this case, what is holding back Mac is the perceived anticipation of a great deal of pain in switching, together with the fact that Windows programs will not work directly on a Mac without a great deal of inconvenience, such as rebooting or using other programs such as Parallels or Crossover to switch back and forth.

Here are my predictions: Next week, on Tuesday, January 9th at MacWorld, Steve Jobs will announce that the new Mac operating system called Leopard, OS X 10.5, will directly run Windows applications without needing Windows. That’s right, you will be able to install and run any Windows program directly into the Mac without having a copy of Windows on the machine! [Update: they made NO Leopard announcements!]

This will be the biggest announcement in the computer industry in the last decade or two.

I further predict that, if and when it occurs, this will produce the biggest word-of-mouth blowout in history. Combine the pent up positive word of mouth of the Mac with the negative word of mouth toward Microsoft, Windows, XP, Vista, the Windows PC makers like Dell, viruses, adware, spyware, malware, etc. and you have an explosive combination. This will be the most interesting test in years of the unleashing of word of mouth. It will demonstrate to the entire marketing community what happens when you follow my marketing approach of Blockbusting: find the  decision blocks, bust ’em up, and you will see exponential growth.

I have been following Technorati and Google searches for months now to see if anyone appreciates what is about to happen. While I’m not the first to predict Windows apps running natively on the Mac, there are very, very few of us making that extreme prediction. Most are predicting some kind of hybrid, virtualization solution.

To my knowledge, I’m the only one predicting the landslide success of Mac in the next year. It probably won’t be immediate, but as the snowball gains momentum, it will grow exponentially. First, people will need the word of mouth of infomediaries  like David Pogue and Walter Mossberg, plus their own friends nad colleagues — particularly the non-technical — to see that it actually works, even with legacy programs. Assuming that it does work for the non-technical, it will throw the Mac into production problems, especially when the Vista virus and other problems start spreading.

By the way, I was among the first to predict that a way would be found to get Windows to work on the then-new Intel Mac. It caused a lot of WOM among the tech savvy and a lot of sales, but not among the corporate people who would have to use it seamlessly at work. Now they can. Now we’ll find out that a lot of corporate IT people have Macs at home.

Advanced congratulations to Steve Jobs and the entire Apple team. You've finally completed the chain. (You now need my consulting to figure out how to handle the tornado.) [Update: There was an immediate crescendo of boos after the non-announcements of anything Leopard, Mac, iLife, iWork, etc., or even anything computer, except to take out “Computer” from their name]

Update:

Well, I was wrong about the announcement, but I stand by the fact that this is the biggest WOM disparity in the history of marketing, just waiting for an explosion.

[The only other time I was wrong was in 1972, when I had thought I had made a mistake! ;-) Brings to mind the quote from George Bernard Shaw, “The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.”]

I also think it would be the smartest thing that Apple could ever do. In fact, the best other thing that they could do is make OS X work on PCs. Sure, they'd lose a few Mac sales, but make it up on software sales. If they announced one or the other this month, they could get a lot of the Vista sales, and a lot of the sales of new boxes with Vista on it.

Now, I'll just have to buy an Intel Mac MacBook and try Crossover, which purports to do just what I predicted, but with an additional program, still without windows. Failing that, I'll use Parallels, but will have to run Windows. [In case you're wondering, I want to run Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 (which I maintain a separate Windows machine just to use) and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are no comparable Mac programs. For everything else I've found, the Mac equivalents are far better.]

Update July, 2005: Got an Intel Mac (MacBook Pro) in May, tried Crossover and Parallels, which didn't work properly with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, VMWare Fusion works like a charm with Windows XP and Dragon.  Parallels had all sorts of quirks with the USB headset and froze up constantly. Crossover wouldn't work at all. With VMWare Fusion, it can now see my Plantronics Audio 500 headset perfectly, and the accuracy is well over 99% and getting better all the time.

It even works perfectly with my Olympus D-30 recorder, even in noisy environments like a car. I'm about to try it in an airplane. I can dictate on my daily walk, into a tiny recorder and have a new section of my new book, a blog post, article or whatever a few minutes after I get back.

The only problem is that I still have to use Windows. Now that I've been away from it for almost 2 years, I'm shocked by how amateurish it is. Also using Word 2007 to dictate into and I'm amazed at how bad the interface is. While there are a few minor improvements, they have further buried many of the most-used functions and won't let them go on the custom bar. 5 clicks to change a template when it's 2 clicks on the Mac version of 2004? What is with Microsoft? Their word of mouth gets worse and worse. Vista is almost totally rejected by sophisticated users. Their sales are on new machines. If Apple could come up with a way to seamlessly allow people to upgrade to OS X in their present machines, they would take over the market.

But it has to be seamless because fear trumps word of mouth, unless the word of mouth is addressing itself to the fear. But people can't say yet that the conversion is easy for an ordinary, non-computer-savvy person to do. I don't care how easy VMWare Fusion is, people need a simple way to switch, with Fusion built in and automatic conversion.

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

How can a product survive a review like this?

Extraordinary review of a new product by an acknowledged expert:

Pogue’s review of Zune

What an example of the kind of word of mouth no one wants to get for a new product!

So, how do you avoid such negative word of mouth?

Involve people like David Pogue as consultants from the beginning, so that you can build in features that reviewers will give positive reviews to. (He probably wouldn’t do it because of the conflict of interest, but there are other people who are just as astute and practical, just not such good writers!) But, I’m afraid that’s too superficial.

The truth is, you have to have the right philosophy, viewpoint, mindset, frame of mind – whatever you want to call it. Apple has a profound respect for the customer and an deep understanding of design. Apple understands the whole Decision Experience. That’s why the iPod isn’t just a player. It’s a whole system that makes all the decisions seamless, easy, simple and fun. Everything about the music experience is made easy, elegant, even beautiful: finding, tasting (trying), refining one’s tastes, acquiring, managing, playing, sorting, etc. (except for backing up and sharing).

Microsoft, on the other hand, has a profound understanding of cut-and-try: getting something out into the marketplace, then learning from the feedback how to gradually refine it. That’s why everyone is wary of Microsoft 1.0 anything. It’s OK if you are very early in a marketplace where no one has a product or no one has a good product, but everyone wants it. In other words, fine for wild innovators, which Microsoft has long-ago ceased to be. But against Apple???!!! Particularly iPod???!!!!!! No, I don’t think so. Microsoft just doesn’t get it — particularly doesn’t understand the overwhelming power of WOM.

I trust Apple to get it right the first time, then improve it. I don’t trust Microsoft to get it right until version 3.0 at least. That’s why I’ll unhesitatingly put Apple’s new operating system on my Mac, but wait for a long time (if ever) to put Vista on my Windows machines. (Written on a Mac by an ex-windows lover)

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: Apple, Marketing, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

A great example of product promotion

How’s this for a great product sample? It’s hilarious, but the reason I’m posting it is that it’s a great marketing example of giving out a sample in the hope it goes viral, I’m sure. As you probably know, I’m not a fan of gratuitous virality attempts, but I’m happy to participate in this one because the thing to be passed on is an actual part of the product instead of some video stunt that’s only tangentially associated with the product, just contributing buzz – otherwise known as noise – in non-word-of-mouth marketing circles.

Click on the link below, then click on the catalog (if you’re blocking Flash on websites, enable it for this site). Click on the lower right hand part of the cover of the catalog, and the pages turn, where you can sample pages from the parody catalog. A perfect way to sample, just waiting to go viral.

SkyMaul: The Catalog Parody by Kasper Hauser

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

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

Word of mouth helps people separate the good from the crap

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked in my speeches and interviews is, “Don’t all the word-of-mouth tools, such as feeds, blogs, the proliferation of other web sites, etc. cause chaos? There is so much crap out there, how do people sort it out?”

It turns out that WOM is a self-improving system (much more about this concept in upcoming posts — subscribe to this feed, I think they’re going to be spectacular!!!) People become infomediaries, screeners, reviewers, etc. Tools are developed to help people sort, filter and evaluate information and sources. We are in the beginning of the Information Revolution — the means for creating and delivery have gone through the roof (word processing, voice dictation, digital cameras on the creation side, and the web, cell phones, ebooks, etc. on the delivery side). But the means to manage these have lagged. So, Google results flood us, but we haven’t developed sufficient means for sorting out all the hits.

We are now seeing – and will continue to see at an increasing rate until the problems are sufficiently solved – a great deal of energy put into the invention of information management systems, as distinct from creation and delivery systems. These are becoming spectacularly popular, such as digg and del.icio.us. While they have been getting a lot of attention, I think their significance is underestimated.

I just stumbled upon a great one that I think will be the next very big hit: StumbleUpon

It’s an add-on to Firefox or Internet Explorer, and makes the switch from Safari to Firefox a no-brainer. It installs a toolbar and when you click on its Stumble button, it takes you to a website that fits your preferences, which you can continually adjust by rating the websites. The choices are uncannily interesting. It's almost spooky. The selections are in your preferences (some of mine are marketing, magic, etc.) and they are the ones that are highest rated by other people. You can also rate web sites that you navigate to in the course of other browsing. It has built-in communities, ways of viewing other like-minded people’s selections, etc. It’s the most addicting thing I’ve found on the web in years: much better than digg and the others. It’s like having BoingBoing that is custom tailored to your interests. Beware, it’s highly addicting.

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

Another sign that the customer is in charge

Another step has been taken in our inevitable march toward the customer being in charge of the marketplace. There is now a phone number that you can call from a cell phone while you are in a store, punch in the product barcode, hear the lowest prices available for that product on the Internet, and actually buy the product!

Frucall - Online Comparison Shopping Web site for Mobile Shoppers


George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and  Consultant
  Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth  Marketing cause aon one hand in a publishing options
  www.mnav.com      wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: 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

An amazing Word-of-Mouth disconnect

Just got back from the WOMMA WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training) conference. 450 people! It was great. More about it later. But I just had to post this: I gave a presentation to a standing-room-only crowd. Very flattering. But I digress.

In the course of the presentation, I said, apropos of a recent post that if WOMwere everything, we'd all be using Macs. Think about it: the best word of mouth in the whole universe, and about a 4% market share. I asked how many people had Macs. About half of the people raised their hands. Then I asked, "Of the Windows people, how many would like to switch if it weren't for the expense and trouble of switching?" Virtually ALL said yes! Wow. What's wrong with this picture?

Apple has done a magnificent job of creating the reasons to switch, but failed to provide a simple, easy way to switch. It's like England trying to get everyone to drive on the right side of the street, gradually. Can't be done.

Some things can't be done gradually, but MUST be done gradually or they are perceived as too painful. The switch from Windows to Mac is one of these for the average computer owner. Virtual PC is too slow and doesn't work for many programs, such as my favorite, Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking 8. So, even though I've switched, I have to maintain a Windows machine to write my books and articles.

Until now. If Apple will encourage developers to develop a simple operating system switcher (they exist now on the Windows platform) that will allow people to switch between Windows and OS X, people will be able to buy a Mac, install Windows and have a Windows machine just as if they bought a Dell. Then they could switch gradually, starting with the browser and mail client, which would get the Windows side of the machine off the internet. Now, they have a Windows machine that is unsusceptible to viruses, spyware, malware, etc. They can switch the other programs gradually and see much easier each application is on a Mac.

Apple probably won't do this. But their customers will. And in the new, new marketing, the customer is in control. As long as Apple doesn't sabotage the ability of its new Intel machines to operate Windows, we will see all of this pent up desire to switch cause a major shift.

Of course, there are a whole lot of other things that Apple needs to do (none of them that hard compared to what they have already done), in order to get a wholesale switch from Windows to Mac.

The lesson: Even when there is a major pent-up demand created by word of mouth, the mechanisms have to exist to switch to it easily.

George Silverman

Word-of-Mouth Marketing Consultant

Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

www.mnav.com wordofmouth.typepad.com

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

Interesting post from Tom Peters

Excerpt:

Last week GM announced August car sales were down a whopping 13% (industry sales were up 3.8%) ... even as they continued their "free cars" employee discount. Ford's biggest SUV sales plunged ... 40%! And, oh yeah, Japanese car market share hit a new record, 39%. (Nissan ... +15%. Toyota ... +14%. Honda ... +23%.) So what, exactly, is it/was it that Wagoner knew that you and I didn't?

Link

In the meantime, Audi has insisted that I pay for every little ding and scratch on a 4-year-old Audi A6. And my Toyota dealer continues to be wonderful about the service on our twin Priuses. Except... they couldn't change the channel in their waiting room from a very disturbing History channel documentary about the Holocaust that I couldn't watch early in the morning before my coffee, because the "only person who can change channels, who has the key, hasn't come in yet and won't be here for an hour. How's that for empowering employees?"

WOMworthy Reporter -- Jeanne Meserve

I think Jeanne Meserve of CNN should be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize or an Emmy. She is the most incisive, articulate and human reporter on any network reporting on hurricane Katrina, maybe anywhere. The impact of the hurricane aftermath didn't hit me until I heard her emotional report Monday night.

She just barely held it together as she described how people were trapped with rapidly rising water in their attics or on their roofs. Her voice choked as she talked about how people were calling out in the darkness for someone to help them, with her and her crew unable to do anything, and as she described how her cameraman worked all day with a broken foot. She clearly painted a pained picture of people on roofs waiting in vain, in the dark, to be rescued.

This is one situation where the appropriate emotional dimension added accuracy. It made me realize that the standard of "dispassionate" reporting can sometimes cause distortion. If she had dispassionaty reported on what she saw, I never would have understood the significance.

This was an amazing example of how word of mouth from a trusted source telling a human story was so much more powerful, believable and accurate than the usual "objective" sources.

George Silverman
President
Market Navigation, Inc.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Consultants
www.mnav.com

Brand = Reputation. Reputation = Brand

p>Great Post by that name from Brand Blogger. Raises the question "But what is reputation?"

Glad you asked. Reputation is an expectation, particularly of performance. That's why brand, or reputation, plays such a large role in decision making. When you see a brand, you think you know what to expect. This saves you a lot of time.

Reputation (Brand) is mostly spread by word of mouth. As I point out in my book, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, a large part of word-of-mouth marketing can be thought of as reputation management. Building a reputation is building a brand, and word of mouth is the key. Who are you going to believe about what to expect about the performance of a product, an ad or your friend, wife, mother, advisor?

I've been finding myself gradually moving over to Apple programs, largely because the brand is building quite a reputation with me and with other users. I keep finding things that their programs do that other programs don't do: great power with simplicity. To be the subject of another post. But suffice it to say here that I just switched almost with blind trust from Entourage (Microsoft's Outlook for the Mac) to Apple's Mail, Address Book and Calendar programs, knowing they wouldn't have the clumsiness that was so annoying with Entourage. I wasn't disappointed. Simple, elegant, yet much more powerful. Easy to archive. Just also switched from Firefox to Safari to take advantage of its use of Services that Firefox lacked. Again, the brand was enhanced.

I know what to expect with some products (positive and negative). That's why I'm willing to pay more for certain BRANDS: The Brand or Name has come to represent the expectation of superior performance.

I'll gladly pay more for Toyota/Lexus, Apple, Nikon, Palm Treo, Go-Daddy, and Monteblanc

Others, like Audi, Microsoft, Earthlink, Verizon and many other brands that I used to love, I now expect inferior performance and service from and wouldn't even use them at a deep discount.

Others, like Adobe and Continental Airlines, have annoyed me in the past with poor service and/or poor useability, but have turned around dramatically, greatly improving their product interfaces and have done some wonderful services favors for me lately. I find that they literally look different to me, and I go out of my way to use them. (It's going to be interesting to see what happens with the Continental brand, now that an accountant has taken over as CEO. Prospects don't look good, judging from the downsizing of their First Class cabins on many planes.)

>>> the brand builder blog: Brand = Reputation. Reputation = Brand.

Customer service horror stories

An amazing example of negative WOM. This story has spread across the whole blogoshere and the mainstream press.

Customer service horror stories in this Chicago Tribune article.

(Via This Is Broken.)

Open letter to Audi -- Why I can't recommend Audi anymore

After many years of both my wife and I owning Audi A6's, I regret to say that I advise against buying Audi's. The story provides many lessons in how to turn positive word of mouth into negative wom.

If you want to see how a blog can turn things negative, read this recent story about how a similar blog posting caused havoc with Dell. Link.

I used to love the Audi A6. I've owned several over the years.  However, the last two have had a series of repairs that I won't bore you with. My wife's last Audi finally died when water seeped into the electrical system because a dranage hole under the battery became clogged (inspecting it is not part of the standard maintenence), causing a short circuit. The entire electrical system was destroyed. The repair would have cost $11,000, but the insurance company chose to total the car.

On my car, the twin turbos both burned out, causing a repair that would have cost $9-11,000 if it were not covered by the lease.

However, the real reason that I can't recommend the Audi is their attitude toward my return of my last car after the lease was up. They had always taken back my cars after the lease had expired without charging me for the normal wear and tear: a few dings and scratches that a three-year-old car typically has. This time, the wear and tear was the same, but the attitude was different. Since I didn't agree to lease another car, they apparently decided to stick it to me. They decided to charge me for every ding, scratch and every other cosmetic deficiency on this three and one half year old car. In all fairness, where was a crack in the windshield that I expected to pay for (but not $600). They have refused to reach any kind of accommodation, thereby turning a staunch advocate into a bitterly disappointed ex customer. I actually intended to buy another Audi eventually. Now, I'll do everything I can to discourage people from dealing with a company who wants to grab a few bucks short term and is obviously not interested in the long-term satisfaction of their customers. I'm now about to try once again to negotiate with Audi to reach a fair accommodation. I'll update this post to let you know what happens.

WOMworthy: the Pluot

Word-of-mouth-worthy products Dept.:

Just ran across an interesting new product that is apparently catching on by WOM: the Pluot(r). It's a cross (actualy an "interspecific," which is more than just a blend) between a plum and an apricot and comes in many varieties. It tastes great, but our focus here is on interesting Word of Mouth stories.

To read an interesting WOM story about how the Pluot word of mouth is being transmitted by an expert and by ordinary people, see Emeril's post about it here.

You can also read about the product from its developer. Link. There, you'll also read about another product, but I'll let you discover it for yourself.

Isn't this a product that cries out for sampling and in-store tasting? Why haven't I been offered a taste of this wonderful product?

Warning: don't just buy one to take home.

By the way, I go to a small Korean supermarket (Orange Market in Orangeburg, NY) that will let me taste (actually, they encourage me to taste) any fruit that I'm thinking of buying.