Brains On Fire Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements

Develop and harness a powerful, sustainable word-of-mouth movement

This book was a collaborative effort of Spike Jones, Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, and myself. We wrote BOF at the height of the word-of-mouth marketing surge into a legitimate marketing discipline.

A Change This manifesto actually birthed this book. Good luck finding a copy of the PDF on the interwebs. 

BOF is now 12 years old and counting. Is it still worth a read? Spike and I rehash the book and speak to its relevance today on Pirates For Good Radio. Our honest take—yes. And we say that in all honesty, we don't receive any royalties from the book sales related to this book and the next book I'll talk about.

Nuts & Bolts

• BOF is a great starting point to get you started on the discovery steps for your brand/organization.

• BOF was written when social media was in its infancy. Maybe that puts the book in the nostalgia section? If you want to move beyond the social media shiny objects, this book is a back-to-the-basics approach to start a more agnostic marketing approach.

• The book is structured into ten chapters. Each chapter is based on a lesson learned. Would I tweak a few of these chapters if I were writing this book today? Yes. But I'm talking tweaks, not a complete rewrite.

• I still believe in Word of Mouth, the most underrated marketing disciple that brands overlook.

The Passion Conversation

Understanding, Sparking,
and Sustaining Word of Mouth

This book was another collaborative effort authored by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, John Moore, and myself.

John and I are word-of-mouth research geeks. Prepping for one of our dual presentations on WOM, we stumbled on this research paper, On Brands and Word-Of-Mouth. John and I set out to take all that smart research and turn it into bite-size marketing nuggets. Bam, the Passion Conversation was born.

The Passion Conversation isn't as soulful as Brains on Fire. It's a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts of word-of-mouth. I would compare the two books this way.

BOF, the book was written when marketing started to change from speaking at customers to talking with customers and getting out of the way to let the customer speak to others on your behalf.

The Passion Conversation came three years later. Word of Mouth was in the process of being consumed by a monster; social media. Don't get me wrong, I love social media. The problem comes when people start with social media instead of people first.

I believe The Passion Conversation should be on every person's bookshelf if they have a business that relies on word of mouth, hint, hint every business relies on word of mouth.

Nuts & Bolts

• Learn about the three motivation triggers for why people talk about businesses and causes.

• I can't say it enough. It's about people stupid.

• Every marketing problem is a people problem in disguise.

• Think conversation tools.

• You have to have a community before you have effective word-of-mouth.

• Lots of workbook exercises we call "Passion Explorations."