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From TIME
By Barbara Kiviat
Apr.23,2007
Word on the Street
Psst...your friends may be shilling for a soap company. Why people love
marketing by word of month.
The next time someone you know raves about a dish detergent or motor oil,
consider this: you might be on the receiving end of a marketing campaign. It's a
new world for people whose job it is to sell you things, what with consumers'
digital video recorder-enabled ability to skip over ads they don't want to see,
and their Internet-empowered freedom to find out all the stuff left out of a
30-sec.TV spot. That's driving marketers to all sorts of new places, including
your circle of friends.
Procter & Gamble, a pioneer in the field, has been focusing on word of
mouth fox six years through its Tremor division, which has enlisted 255,000
teenagers in the US. to tell their friends about brands like Herbal Essences and
Old Spice. Last year, P&G signed up 500,000 adult volunteers, all mothers,
for Vocalpoint, a program in which the moms evangelize about pet food, paper
towels and hair color. P&G gives the women marketing materials and coupons,
but they are free to say whatever they like (or nothing at all) about the
products. BzzAgent, a firm that specializes in word-of-mouth marketing, has its
260,000 volunteers submit detailed profiles about their habits and interests,
which BzzAgent uses to match them to word-of-mouth campaigns for products made
by companies such as Nestle, Arby's, Philips, Kraft and BP.
This unscripted strategy might sound like a big risk, but despite the
conventional wisdom that consumers are much more likely to voice complaints than
praise, recent research finds the opposite. In one study, Andrea Wojnicki, an
assistant professor at the University of Toronto, looked at self-styled experts
and found that they were likely to keep negative experiences to themselves, lest
their skill-at, say, picking a restaurant-be called into question.
And why are these citizen marketers so willing to shill for free? Inside
access to products and the feeling that companies care about what you and your
friends think are such strong motivating forces that other forms of compensation
pale in comparison. BzzAgent's members earn reward points, which they can cash
in for prizes like DVDs and books—yet 87% of them never do.
Word of mouth has been around for ages-"Try the apple," said Eve-and it
continues to prove resilient. A consultancy called the Kelley Fay Group found
that 18% of word-of-mouth marketing took place on the phone, and 72% face to
face, despite the ubiquity of electronic communication. Or perhaps because of
it. “Inundated by ads,” says Tremor CEO Steve Knox, "Consumers have gone back to
their most trusted source-family and friends."
Naturally, some people aren't happy about marketers' following them there.
In 2005 the advocacy group Commercial Alert asked the Federal Trade Commission
to investigate company-fed word of mouth and other buzz tactics, which the group
says take authentic relationships and unduly commercialize them. Not all firms
ask word of mouthers to disclose their corporate connection, but the Word of
Mouth Marketing Association requires its 400-odd members to do so as part of its
ethics code. There might also be a business case for disclosure. Word of mouth
is built on trust, explains Gerald Zaltman, a sociologist and professor emeritus
at Harvard Business School. Fessing up reinforces that.
But perhaps the biggest lesson companies can learn from word of mouthers is
that there's an unmet social need among consumers to feel that their opinions
matter. "They care what you have to say," says Carol Engels, a Vocalpoint mother
in suburban Chicago. "That's what I like most" Smart companies find that, when
they listen, they also get a shot at steering the conversation.
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发表于 2017-8-6 16:20:40