Is Word of Mouth Still Relevant?
In 2012, John Moore and I presented the concept of WOMology at WOMMA’s (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) WOMM-U. WOMology is a mashed-up approach to understanding the smart word of mouth research findings combined with in-the-trenches beliefs that John and I have gleaned over 40+ (guessing) years of marketing.
Our presentation sparked a lot of curiosity and attention. The original SlideShare had been viewed over 120,000 times until it was accidentally deleted by a SlideShare gremlin. You can find it here. WOMology ignited such excitement for people that it became the centerpiece of Brains on Fire’s second book, The Passion Conversation, published in 2013.
One of the goals of Pirates For Good is to revisit WOMology and word of mouth marketing and inspire others into joining the practice of word of mouth marketing.
I owe Word of Mouth Marketing a lot. When I stumbled into word-of-mouth marketing - I just called it the right thing to do. In 2002 the right project fell into my life. My home state of South Carolina was experiencing one of the highest teen smoking rates in the US. They were looking to impact that through a teenage smoking cessation program.
That project, Rage Against the Haze, was born out of a personal experience, sitting at the kitchen table with parents who’ve lost children to drug abuse a few years earlier. The raw emotion, empathy, the sharing of stories inspired me to think about marketing differently.
For the first time in my career, I started to see people not just as consumers but as messengers with a voice. I’ll be the first to admit I was still rolling this around in my head.
Building it with People
Answering the RFP for Rage against the Haze brought clarity and this little nugget of a question in my memory waiting to come out. “Can we harness the power of peer-to-peer communication, the exchange of ideas, and can we empower teenagers to be living messengers for tobacco cessation?” Many people saw this as an enormous reach and not marketing. However, based on recent personal experience, I had a different view. Between 2000 and 2002, I had volunteered to work with a local organization. I helped them build and empower a youth-led program. The teens I worked with shared what was wrong with ‘summer programs.’ These programs were in school classrooms, where these youth sat behind school desks while an adult lectured… to them; these ‘summer programs’ were boring. So, we blew it up. I asked them, “so what would you do if you were the teachers?” A program called Big Mouth Production was born. We changed the topic structure, added games, did these sessions anywhere but a classroom, brought in bean bag chairs, we did sessions outside, and it worked. We had created a youth-led curriculum that they facilitated for their peers.
We applied the same ideas we learned from the summer programs to Rage Against the Haze. Rage became an authentic youth-led movement — not a glorified ad campaign. Built on the shoulders of teenagers (they called themselves Viralmentalists), RAGE lived as a peer-to-peer initiative for almost nine years. In its nine-year life, RAGE trained over 2000 teenagers, had a member-based of over 6500, and played a prominent role in reducing the teen smoking rate in South Carolina by 16.9%.
An interesting note about that stat. For five years, the state of South Carolina had not been able to survey teenagers about smoking and related issues in public schools. To get this survey to happen, our RAGEers went to their high school principals all over the state and petitioned their schools to conduct these tests. They were successful, and this played the foundational role to get actual data on teens, not just random data from surveys.
RAGE had many ups and downs during its lifetime. It was defunded in year three — which led to a reporter writing an editorial about how the state was using tobacco settlement funds. This led to a private doctor’s association showing up at the door of my workplace at the time, Brains on Fire, and handing Cathy Harrison, a fellow RAGE developer, and myself a check for $100,000. I still tear up thinking about that moment. That gift led to new funding, and RAGE lived on for six more years.
RAGE was a powerful soapbox for teens. It taught them many things: tobacco education and health education, but maybe the essential thing to believe in themselves. In my opinion and observations, many adults in ‘control’ hated this program because teens were in control and had the microphone. In the end, that led to the program’s death. A newly elected state senator hated the program, calling the program disrespectful to our state and its heritage.
I learned a lot during those years riding along with those fantastic RAGEers. They didn’t need adult leadership driving their efforts. They just needed our support and to know that we believed in them. We said about RAGE, “if we got hit by a bus tomorrow, we want to make sure the kids can keep this thing going.”
RAGE got the attention of Andy Sernovitz and Pete Waldheim and a new organization called WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association). Fellow marketer and WOMologist, Spike Jones and I went to the first WOMMA summit in Chicago, and it was an electric experience. I presented RAGE at the event, which led to a new trajectory for Brains on Fire. Still, as I reflect on that experience today, I’m humbled that we were a part of a diverse collection of people that birthed WOM marketing as a viable discipline. WOMMA was adrenalin for Brains on Fire and my career.
Being a part of RAGE and having the program be recognized with Coke and Yahoo as the first WOMMY award winners are at the top of my career highlights. More important than the WOMMY awards was the fuel that WOMMA gave Word of Mouth Marketing.
Today WOM as a discipline is a shadow of its former self. WOMMA has merged into ANA (Association of National Advertisers); all that energy of WOMMA’s birth and the exchanging of ideas has been gobbled up by the sheer force of social media. WTF!
I can’t stand by and just let the excitement, energy, and potential of WOM disappear. In truth, my actions maybe aren’t needed. If you ask any business, word of mouth is usually mentioned as an essential factor for their business. But, just because everyone says it’s important doesn’t mean they truly understand the power and passion of WOM.
I recently talked to a client about how we would take a pathway and bring it into a community strategy. Without hesitation, I started verbalizing the elements of WOMology - its three motivational triggers emotional, functional, and social. I was riffing on this pretty strongly when the client stopped me and said, “hold on, I’m writing this down.” What the hell just happened, I thought to myself? No, not about what I told the client, but what happened to WOMology? Did we abandon it? No, WOMology is the core principle at the heart of my strategic beliefs. It’s what I have learned to believe in and become a practitioner of.
Shame on me for not taking every opportunity to educate and inspire others about word of mouth’s basic principles.
I’ve built my career helping brands and organizations navigate today’s complex marketing challenges. A clear center of purpose grounded in a people-first strategy is needed more than ever. It literally takes an army to help a brand gain insight and create meaningful engagement with its customers, fans, and advocates in the digital and real worlds.
Before the pandemic, I did several local workshops with small business owners in Anderson, SC. I started out the first workshop with a simple question to those attending “why did you come here today? What do you hope to gain?” The reality was that all the stuff I had cued up and prepared to present didn’t address why these folks came to hear me speak on word-of-mouth marketing. As I talked with these small business owners, I began to question whether or not marketers have a genuine interest in helping the women and men that live on Main Street USA.
That experience led me back to refocusing on WOMology and how I can do a better job using word-of-mouth motivators in my work. I chalk most of this up to growing tired of talking about it and taking that people get it for granted.
Marketing is a broken ship
Led by the tyranny of conversion over conversation and acquisition over advocacy. I believe WOMology can help us fix what is broken. Still, it may need a band of WOMology pirates to mutiny and set the ship back on the course of being people-centric.
Next time we will go on a deep dive into the art of community identity.