Word of Mouth Summit highlights and interviews

In this show, we bring you highlights from this week's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit in Chicago, hosted by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

To bring you said highlights, we hauled our mobile podcasting studio (if there is such a thing) to the conference and recorded interviews with some key experts and summit panelists.

Show topics
1. Where does most word of mouth happen? Does advertising kill word of mouth?
2. Do "lightly loyal" customers spread more word of mouth than "heavy loyal" customers?
3. Word of mouth as a holistic, long-term customer loyalty strategy
4. The "four horsemen" of deceptive word of mouth marketing practices
5. Defining word of mouth marketing and podcasting

To listen to the show, click on the podcast icon below. (File size is 28 MB).

Show notes
Links to people, companies, articles, blogs, etc. mentioned in the podcast:

* Guy Kawasaki, author of Selling the Dream and The Art of the Start
* Dave Balter, CEO of Bzzagent
* Ed Keller, co-author of The Influentials
* George Silverman, author of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
* Todd Woloson, CEO of IZZE Beverage
* Light loyalists research paper (PDF) from Harvard and Bzzagent
* "The One Number You Need to Grow" article by Frederick Reichheld in the Harvard Business Review
* Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester Research
* Andy Sernovitz, CEO of WOMMA
* "Four horseman" of deceptive word of mouth marketing practices
* Coni Rechner, director of marketing for Discovery Education 
* Keith Bates, Keith Bates Associates
* Betsy Whalen, market manager for Discovery Education

Show music
Intro: "G.L.S." by Salme Dahlstrom
Break 1: "Chicago" by CSN&Y                         
Break 2: "Shoot Out the Lights" by Richard Thompson 
Break 3: "Listening Wind" by Talking Heads
Break 4: "(Close) To the Edit" by The Art of Noise
Break 5: "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Presidents of the United States

Show length
30:46 minutes

Tell us what you think! Add a comment below, or send an email to talktous(AT)customerevangelists.com.

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Find previous podcasts here.

[Technorati tags: podcasts, marketing]

Comments

[Dave Balter]

Jackie/Ben -

Wonderful. Love the debate and energy.

I certainly agree with campaign-based idea you bring up. We understand the concept of "institutionalized" vs. natural WOM and that there can be a difference. We're actually doing a study right now with Northeastern's Walter Carl, to formalize metrics for this very question.

The question really is about what happens if you start to embrace your customers - how do they change overall? If you engage with evangelists and train them, embrace them, help them communicate with you, they learn how to be much more effective communicators in total. They talk more, they influence more people at one time, they understand which issues to address, etc. Whether it's evangelists or light loyals, we're seeing
this trend.

First podcast I've heard with music. You're driving my firsts!

Dave

[Emanuel Rosen]

Ben and Jackie,

This was fun to listen to and very interesting as always! One thing that excited me about the WOMMA Summit was the fact that we heard so many people who are doing different things to stimulate discussion. There's more than one way, especially as we look at such a wide range of industries.

love the podcast. I'm now a regular listener.

Emanuel

[Jackie Huba]

Thanks Emanuel! It was great to see you again.

I agree that it was awesome to see so many new ideas about creating word of mouth at the Summit!

[Ben McConnell]

Emanuel delivered a terrific keynote presentation at the Summit.

His advice to seed multiple networks simultaneously and employ word of mouth for more than stunt-based marketing was dead-on accurate.

[Spike Jones]

Hey guys,

I was at the WOMMA conference as well. My associate, Geno Church, actually presented a case study that we did that underlines the importance of building and nurturing a sustainable culture of true belivers (we call them Viralmentalists). This smoke and mirrors campaign-based thing is just another flash in the pan. Don't get me wrong - it has its place - but as you said, truly remarkable companies don't need to generate hype around new products - their loyal customers do it for them.

[Andy Sernovitz]

The podcast was amazing!
You guys are a class act.

Thanks for helping make our conference so wonderful. Ben's panel and Jackie's keynote were major highlights.

[Mary Hunt]

Ben & Jackie - Enjoyed the podcast. Re: your question, "Why do people trust websites and emails when they seek information and not when it's advertised or provided to them..."

I think it's because we trust information when we ask for it, and don't if someone "gives us advice" we didn't ask for. It can be the same source and the same information, it just depends on how receptive we are at the time.

[rofovnifo]

Hi

Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!


G'night

[mosbarger]

[url=" http://nebraska1.digitalzones.com/map.html "]Hi[/url]
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

[Lawrencia]

Good morning. Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
I am from South and learning to speak English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Finishing touch hair remover replacement parts: after the daughter of the player, the presence curled at the horse of billboard's flashes for nine treasures."

THX :-(, Lawrencia.