As was only a matter of time, a debunker has arisen from the marketing world to take on the "Influencer" theory, which was brought to mainstream consciousness with Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and is a foundation of current word of mouth marketing. Not surprisingly, there are immediate (and invested) detractors and a lively debate will most likely ensue. I’ve been away from the blog for a bit and had a post started and saved entitled "Apple’s billion dollar WOM success story" in response to a lot of the assertions following MacWorld as to the truly organic nature of the Apple brand story. Needless to say, it seems it’s appropriate to now merge it into this one!

In Sean’s post in response to Watt’s Fast Company article, he says:

Well I’ll be darned. Watts believe that companies can’t will a trend that grows small and spreads large into existence. If Watts then, can explain to be the growth of Facebook, MySpace, Wii, Prius, Starbucks, eBay, Apple, Burton, Jones Soda, Maker’s Mark, Innocent Drinks, Harley Davidson, lululemon and a host of other products that have eschewed mass media and have galvanized a brand community through grassroots experiences and targeting fans, ambassadors and influencers, then I guess I’ll reject most of what I’ve written about in my last 400 posts.

I hate to be a wet blanket on the theories that all the ‘cool, hip’ brands eschewed mass media and are the pure products of influencer word-of-mouth, but, for most of these brands, traditional marketing and advertising was the way they reached critical mass, established their brand identity, and the blended approach they are currently using, in the case of Apple specifically, continues to drive their growth.

In other words:

Influencer cultivation and communication builds long-term and sustainable product loyalty and evangelism.

Brand marketing brings out the over-arching brand essence, reaches a large and diverse audience, and helps discover new influencers.

And the cycle continues.

Let’s take Apple as the classic example of the viral success story… I absolutely agree that a lot of their early success was driven by their niche customer base and that these graphic designers, etc. were evangelists. Absolutely true. But Apple did a lot of TV, print, online, and radio advertising to support their product, because, as a niche product without a wider reaching customer base, it was in trouble. In 1997, Apple, struggling with 3% of the market, received a cash infusion from Microsoft. In a landmark moment Steve Jobs stood on stage at MacWorld, with Bill Gates on the video screen behind him, and said the following:

The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over, as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry to get healthy and prosper again.

What a difference 10 years make and a carefully re-crafted brand image and massive amounts of dollars spent in traditional advertising to support the product launches.

When I was in Los Angeles in 1997 - 2001 I distinctly remember the Think Different campaign… it was omnipresent: billboards, posters, TV, Internet… everywhere. And that type of ad spend was replicated in cities across the US and the world. Apple hasn’t stopped using traditional channels since… Mac vs. PC commercials are the latest incarnation and they aren’t only available on YouTube. EarthLink, while I was working there, played off of the edginess of Think Different with their own campaign… they wanted to be the Apple to AOL’s Microsoft. Unfortunately, then Microsoft got in the ISP game and the rest is history.

But I digress…

Even the pure internet (and now name brand) companies advertised through mass channels when they launched, throughout the 90’s and ’00’s - Yahoo! was all over TV and radio with the annoying cowboy spots; eTrade on the SuperBowl, OOH, DM, print; Google out of home ads everywhere; MySpace 100M blast email campaign; eBay was launched with print and radio and added in TV in 2000… and the list goes on. And in so far as Prius goes, sure the celebrities riding around in them gives the campaign cachet, but the classic automaker TV, print, web, OOH, and event marketing certainly helps build the awareness over the long term. I also think I may have seen a few Wii TV spots before the holidays?

Now, all of this being said, word-of-mouth cultivation and, more recently, social media strategies, are hugely important, and are needed to elevate the brand into a true dialogue and value exchange with customers, but it’s not the messiah. It’s about integration and understanding who your brand speaks to, builds products for, and respectfully letting them know about you and finding out how you can help them in their daily lives. It’s about telling a story that is meaningful, making people stand up and take notice, and providing a solid reason for them to do so.

Sometimes that means convincing the high school design geek that Mac’s are cool 20 years ago, only to see him grow up to be Tim Burton and become an influencer to a mass audience.

In the end: Branding still matters. Brand promises still matter. Products always matter. And the influencers and evangelists matter. The lifecycle matters and the integration matters. To do anything in a vacuum, and without understanding the symbiotic relationship between brand and consumer, is a recipe for disaster.

[Photo credit: Paranoid Black Jack via Flickr]

It was great being at SES Toronto this year and Andrew did a fantastic job as Chair! Lots of juicy tips, tactics and strategies for building SEO through social media.

The talk I gave on Day 2 (the last speaker even!) was slightly off the beaten path from the other presentations which focused on specific tools and tactics for spreading word of mouth online. I went back to basics and spoke about the fundamentals of building true and long-term WOM, planning and ensuring you find the strategy that fits for your brand. My presentation, for those interested, can be downloaded here. My fellow speakers, Rand, Helen and Neil had some valuable tactics in their ppt’s so if you can track down copies of their decks I would recommend it!

If you were at the conference and attended either the Site Clinic session or the “Get Dugg” session, I’d love to hear your feedback… is there something you wished I had expanded on? Or scaled back?

I’m looking forward to next year already! :)

[Photo Credit: John Cohen on Flickr]

SES Toronto 2007; Search Engine Strategies Toronto; Andrew Goodman; Neil Patel; Rand Fishkin; Helen Overland

I’m spending the next two days at Search Engine Strategies Toronto where I’ll be part of the “Site Clinic” panel today and the Get Dugg WOM panel. If you’re in the neighbourhood stop by and say hello! The conference appears to be rock solid this year and has something searchie-goodness for everyone.

I’m not one for live blogging, but hopefully we’ll have a few bloggers on hand to provide summaries as we go for those not attending this year.

SES Toronto; Search Engine Strategies Conference

Now that the madness of the last month has died down (the AQUOS 1080p D82 Challenge is alive and rockin’ in the green world!), I’ve been able to reflect on my trip to Cancun (yes, I offset my footprint!) and how the simple experience of a week’s vacation morphed into my complete loyalty to Club Med, and how paying attention to your customer’s needs (expressed or not) makes the biggest difference in how someone views your brand… and starts to spread word of mouth.

I’d been to Club Med Cancun two years previously when it was an adults only resort, and after the devastation of hurricane Wilma they recently re-opened as family friendly in November of 2006. Now, I’m not one to enjoy crowded swimming pools with screaming kids and waits for beach chairs or drinks, so I was a bit apprehensive when Kevin and I got on the plane. I really shouldn’t have worried. Kev and I really couldn’t believe our eyes. It felt like there were maybe 50 people at any one place at one time. The kids were off with the G.O.’s doing their own thing and when they walked through the resort they were happy, and oddly well behaved. The parents who we spoke with all said how wonderful it was for them to be on vacation, be able to relax, and not have to worry about their kids. A vacation away from the kids, with the kids. Perfect.

The beauty of a Club Med is that it allows you to choose your own experience and they do whatever it takes to facilitate it. If you want to go all out and do sports all day - the G.O. team is there. If you want to hang out on the beach with a cerveza and zen out to the ocean (Tamera), they leave you alone except to facilitate the cerveza’s. The Chef de Village, Eyal, was exemplary and ensured that the live music each night, circus acts and every thing and every one was running smoothly. It was especially nice for him to welcome and then see off the bus of rowdy Torontonians… it really is the little things that make an experience exceptional.

And what can anyone say about the local staff - the bartenders, cooks, housekeeping, gardening and security - but warm, amazing, diligent. Everyone at Club Med wanted to be there (well, as much as one would want to be at work when it’s 32 C out…) and it emanated down to the guests.

The excursions arranged through the Club are also top notch. Our trip to Coba and Tulum was led by a certified archeological tour leader who’d been in Quinta Roo for 12 years, and was punctuated by lunch at the Club Med archeological villa at Coba with the chance for a light swim. Perfect day.

The same experience with the private catamaran snorkeling trip to Isla Muejheres. The crew was superb and a ton of fun, the sun was shining and Mexico was beautiful. It emanates through every person Club Med engages.

The moral of the story - Kevin and I cannot imagine another vacation elsewhere unless we’re doing our own local adventures. We’re fans and that matters. It may cost a bit more to go to a Club Med, but, this experience is worth the cost.

The product experience lives up to the branding, and the company and employees care… and that is unfortunately exceedingly rare these days.

Air Transat on the other hand, well, I won’t ruin this post with that tale.

Tags: Club Med; Mexico; Cancun; AQUOS 1080p D82 Challenge

I know I haven’t blogged in eons, but I have been supremely busy with new clients and programs at TFC and have been putting theories into action so to speak, and my blog has suffered. For that I do apologize. I hope to rectify the situation after returning from a week in the sun in early May, although I do have one other post brewing I hope to squeak out before I leave (how’s that for some mixed metaphors!). :)

All that aside, in reading Sean’s wrap-up from the CMA’s recent “From Mass to Grass Conference”, I was struck by something I’ve been noticing recently - a blurring of the lines between viral & WOM when speaking about the success of a “word of mouth” campaign. In too many instances they actually are describing a viral campaign. And there is a distinction worth noting - viral occurs when you’ve passed the tipping point; WOM gets you to the tipping point.

I hate to be blunt about this, but if you’ve purchased TV ads and billboards and are blaring your URL to the world, it doesn’t qualify as word of mouth. It can definitely qualify as viral if enough people dig what you’ve produced online and send the link to their friends, tag it, or post about it on their blog. But it’s mass audience, not influencers and organic.

The essence of WOM is that it spreads organically; you are earning the publicity, not paying for it. If your microsite URL is on TV you’re the one spreading the word, not your customers.

If we’re talking to our client’s about generating word of mouth, we should also be making the distinction between getting the WOM via advertising vs. getting it because their customers were evangelizing to their friends.

[Update - June 15, 2007] I’m adding this as an update here to Sean’s post on his blog as I don’t feel like signing up for a typepad account in order to comment… btw Sean, my comments are fixed, it was a database issue (spam will take over the internet before we know it!).

I don’t have a ton to say except that I don’t believe I said above that WOM couldn’t be orchestrated, I just obviously have a fundamental disagreement with Sean as to what constitutes true word of mouth. Semantics do matter if you’re working towards long-term and big picture goals. I’ll reiterate my thoughts - if you are using mass advertising to drive people to your website and then push or cajole them to spread the word, that’s not meaningful word of mouth that builds true influential brand evangelists and contributes to long-term customer loyalty (the fundamentals of a WOM program). It’s an ad campaign with an online driver… same as it was in 1999, 2002 or 2005.

Word of mouth happens when people are compelled to share their positive (or negative) experiences with your brand or product within their circle of influence. Word of mouth can be orchestrated, but it has to come from a position of equality and respect… not blaring an ad on TV. Mass isn’t sexy - exclusivity is (as I pointed out in my WOM presentation at SES, available here). Viral isn’t a bad thing by any means, it’s just different.

[photo credit: moose477 on Flickr]