Isabel Walcott Draves

Angry Customers = Bad Word of Mouth

David Andelman at Forbes discusses a survey done by the Customer Care Alliance, revealing that 70% of US respondents have "experienced rage" when dealing with a customer service representative or system.

Personally I am surprised that it is that low.  But over 50% of these raging consumers have sworn never to do business again with the company in question.  If anyone thinks they're not telling their friends, that person doesn't understand basic psychology.  What's really interesting about all this is that now we have the Internet.  Rants about how much MCI sucks, that used to only get told to a couple friends, are now getting thousands of hits a day.  (Listen to some of these recorded customer service calls, they are truly comedy.  Unless, of course, you are the one making the call, in which case, they are agony.)

Time to shape up your complaint resolution departments, folks.

WOMM Boosts Bottom Line!

For all of you who have requested data indicating that Word of Mouth Marketing improves a business' bottom line, there's a study out from the London School of Economics that says: YES!  The Listening Company partnered with the LSE's Institute of Social Psychology to determine the strong correlation between positive WOM and corporate growth.

It seems that even doing a little listening and responding to disgruntled customers can go a long way: a 2% reduction in negative word of mouth was found to increase sales growth by 1% for consumer-oriented companies selling cars, mobile phones, groceries, and banking services.

But, beware: The Listening Company's founder Neville Upton has his detractors , who accuse him of being a dastardly junk mailer.  Sounds as though The Listening Company might need to listen a little harder to those who say, "Take me off your list!"

Heard Around Town

People often ask me what Word of Mouth Marketing is.  Well, here are a couple of interesting Word of Mouth Marketing initatives so you can see it in action.

- Microsoft hires college students to promote their class-notes-organizing software on campus

- Cloud Ten Pictures sets up preview screenings of their new film, which has a "biblical message of salvation", at thousands of churches across the US (To quote their website, the producer said theater showings are a loss leader that drives video sales. The Sony Pictures Entertainment DVD releases in stores tomorrow. )

Another way to drive Word of Mouth is to determine who the influencers are and consult with them on product launches.  An August survey conducted by Intelliseek confirms what we already knew, that early adopters are early adopters and cool people are cool.  It's no coincidence that iPod users are also bloggers, movie downloaders, and text messagers, but Apple is entitled to feel proud about it anyway.

The Times It Is a-Changin'

Apologies to Bob Dylan...

I spent a lot of time last week thinking about Word of Mouth Marketing with a team of really talented PR-turned-WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing) folks from Edelman.  One thing we worked on was how to communicate externally why the nature of PR is necessarily changing. My personal take: There is a gathering backlash against authority in America.  People have begun to question their teachers, their doctors, their parents -- in short, independence is thriving.  (To the dismay of some - like the conservative groups that objected to the SmartGirl slogan, "Smart girls decide for themselves".)

The Internet facilitates this anti-authoritarian streak, because it allows people to get second, third and hundredth opinions with a few clicks.  The Internet enables many-to-many networked communication that challenges the traditional broadcasting model.  There are now millions of choices for information and entertainment sources, and many of those sources are just other people with similar interests.  Edelman's Trust Barometer 2005 shows the average person's faith in "a person like me" jumped dramatically from 2003 to 2005, while their trust in corporations, traditional media and the government declined.

The "Old PR", or working mainly with journalists, though not in mortal danger as some doomsayers insist, must consequently now share some shelf space with Word-of-Mouth Marketing, in which companies actually have a conversation with their customers, and give enthusiastic customers whatever help they need to spread the word.

Here's one of my ideas for an explanatory slide (this one didn't make it into the deck):

The old clip:

The new CLIP: Connect, Learn, Interact, Participate.

The Problem with Advocacy

I read a great post today that I am referencing even though it's old.  The author writes, "we are all lawyers".  His or her point is that most people these days take a position and argue it, with little regard for the merits of the other side's argument or for the possibility of changing their own minds.  How often have we all done this in our lives?

Marketers do this all the time, to their great detriment.  They advocate their position, and it's rare for them to take either input (incoming information that changes the system) or feedback (response after a change).  Can we all please get on the Cluetrain and have conversations with our customers, and stop "lecturing" our "audience"?

I liked this person's blog, "Only Connect",  but they seem only to have kept it for a short time, and I can't discern who the author is.  Is this a feature, or a bug, in the "everybody publishes" blogosphere?  Is it a coincidence that their blog ended on the day they wrote the "we are all lawyers" post?  Or did that signal their disillusionment with the creative process online?

Has Blogging Jumped the Shark?

The latest New Yorker cartoon about the Internet mocks bloggers:

A twinge of jealousy, perhaps? 

Or maybe they're right, and blogging has jumped the shark.  Now that I am finally blogging, now that mainstream media has finally noticed blogging -- and now that massive PR firms like Edelman, where I work, help their corporate clients with blogging strategies -- have too many people started to blog?  And the first, best, and coolest bloggers are going on to better, cooler, newer things like podcasting and cooking.

By the way, the New Yorker cartoon bank is one of Edelman's clients and Renee is advising them.  So their strategy, whatever it is, appears to be working, since so many bloggers are blogging about the incessant barking cartoon.

What Bloggers Blog

Although only 29% of bloggers blog about the news, 44% read blogs to get fresh perspective on the news.  This from a recent study by AOL published at emarketer.com.

You wouldn't think valuable news perspective was in such short supply, unless you've seen the mainstream media lately.  This should serve as yet another wake-up call for traditional news outlets, that they are having their lunch eaten by the blogosphere. But we knew that.

Impressive Match

Somehow I just found myself examining a new "whitepaper" put out by Match.com: "How to find the right person in 90 days - a step by step guide".  I found it fascinating for two reasons:

1) It was clearly a WHITEPAPER.  The first consumer-oriented whitepaper I have ever seen.  I'm impressed that Match.com has been able to apply this B2B marketing concept to their company, and I think it will work well for them because...

2) They did everything right.  Yes, it's true.  I read it expecting something cheesy and self-serving.  Instead, I found a whitepaper in the best form.  The relationship-finding advice they give is well-written, well-researched, and sound.  It doesn't focus on looking for a mate online; it discusses approaches "competitive" to match.com such as looking to a close friend and going to that party you were thinking of blowing off, rightly including online dating as one thread in a mesh of romance strategies.

So, I'm surprised and impressed.

Invisible Hand

It's unfortunate that the practice of stealth marketing hasn't been thoroughly discredited yet -- although Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba did a good job of differentiating good from evil if you care to read into it. 

Word of Mouth marketing is confusing to some traditional PR folks, because creating conversations is so different from the "messaging" many are used to.  WOM Marketers can neither "stay out of the way" nor try to "control" public conversations after product launch.  The first is merely ineffective and the second, disastrous.

I propose the metaphor of the "Invisible Hand".  To get good WOM, companies must make products and deliver services such that people can say good things about them honestly.  Evangelists cannot be faked, but they can be converted.  So WOM marketing is about introducing great products and services to a select group in interesting and cool ways -- but it won't work if the product or service is not valuable in and of itself. 

The blogger, the constant IM-er, and the surburban gossip want to tell others about their tastes and opinions.  None of them is endeavoring to be a flack or spinmaster for your company.  And yet, that is exactly what they become - through no express will of their own -  if you set the wheels in motion through that magic combination of a chatworthy product and a creative WOM campaign.

Whether the Invisible Hand metaphor works for the economy is not the subject of today's blog, but I'm sure Russ Nelson would be happy to discuss it with you.

TrustBusters

A brief comment on the public's eroding trust in the American corporation. 

In the wake of the recent case against Merck, some newspaper articles have criticized the American legal system's  "irrational verdicts" and "insane" awards.  Others said the verdict was "bad news for all consumers who hope that pharmaceutical companies will continue to develop new drugs", bemoaned the sick people who would now have to wait longer for drugs, and recommended lawsuit immunity for drug companies.

Merck hoped it would be safe from liability since they pulled Vioxx from the market ages ago, they followed FDA rules, and there didn't seem to be any proof citing Vioxx as the actual cause of Carol Ernst's husband's death.

Apparently, though, the jury was just really pissed off that Merck obviously knew their product was dangerous and they chose to ignore the dangers in order to raise their revenues.  That is what was unacceptable - Merck's dishonesty, greed, and abuse of trust. 

"The Texas jury didn't pull that $229 million punitive damages figure out of thin air. According to an internal memo written in 2001, that's the amount of extra profit the company estimated it could make if it could delay a Food and Drug Administration warning on the label.", explained an editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

I'm not an advocate for "lottery winning" lawsuits in any way -- and I think the award should go to a good cause and not into someone's wallet.  But I believe the punishment fits the crime -- which was cheating the American people.  For shame.  If Merck gets forced into bankruptcy because of this case, it won't be that different from Enron, or any other company that cheated in order to win and then got caught.  They have no-one to blame but themselves.