Courtesy of viralblog.com
Humour works in advertising. It grabs your attention, makes you laugh, and gives you a nice endorphin rush.
It also makes you more positively inclined towards a particular brand, especially if its cleverly done without trying too hard. In fact, some commercials can be even more entertaining than comedy shows on television!
In the age of social and digital media, your ultimate goal is to create a business that others will share freely about. That in a nutshell is what Word Of Mouth is all about.
But how can you increase the shareability of your business? What techniques can you use to improve Word Of Mouth for your business?
One of my favourite marketing gurus Seth Godin shares his ideas on how tribes are changing the world, community by community, in a grassroots evangelistic sort of way. In the age of social media with its platforms and tools – blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk etc – the barriers to entry in starting any movement is considerably lowered. The democratisation of publishing and content production means that anybody can leverage on these tools to create pockets of influence wherever they are.
While not every one of us can be as convincing or charismatic a speaker as Seth, his speech does give us much food for thought on what we can do as marketers, as communicators, as publicists and as leaders. Perhaps it is time for us to start our own movements today?
PS – I just heard from Jackie Huba (via Twitter) of Church of the Customer that Seth’s looking for stories for his next edition of Purple Cow. Sounds like a great way to get your local stories of extraordinary products and businesses in …. if you can meet Seth’s high standards! I will start to consider some options now…
Yesterday afternoon, my wife together with my son and maid got into an accident along CTE (I was attending a work lunch then). What happened was a tale of God’s divine providence mixed with extraordinary service excellence.
My wife was driving towards the city and encountered the usual Saturday afternoon jam. Traffic was extremely heavy and crawling at a snail’s pace. Unfortunately, a slick black BMW driven by a young 19 year old guy crashed into the rear of our car. He must either be driving his dad’s car or distracted by his girlfriend.
The shock was so hard that the beamer’s airbag popped up. Fortunately, my family didn’t suffer major injuries although my maid had a swelling on her head (currently under observation) while my wife’s back hurt. Both cars stopped and my wife took down the driver’s full particulars (NRIC, license plate, hand phone photos of damage, insurance company, car model).
Was reading Steve Rubel’s post about The Golden Age of Individualism which pointed to this decade old gem by management guru Tom Peters.
In Tom’s article on the “Brand Called You”, he wrote about the need to establish oneself as an authority on the matters which one is passionate about, the importance of influence and visibility, and the need to have BOTH style and substance.
David versus Goliath
Storytelling is sweeping the social media world by storm. However, crafting the perfect story can be quite a bitch for the uninitiated.
Thankfully, we’ve got brilliant online storytellers to help us here.
Ian McKee, CEO of Vocanic, shared at the recent PR Academy Conference about the importance of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing. Anybody who has spent time on the blogosphere will probably have heard about this term. However, what does it truly mean?
In his presentation, Ian shared some startling findings.
Word of Mouse in Action!
I am currently reading the Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, a book by George Silverman, which I borrowed from the National Library. Fascinating stuff in there with some explanation of how one can make Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing work.
Let me highlight two key learning points. First is the Buying Decision Process. Those who studied Marketing 101 may be familiar with this. The stages are as follows:
Lately, I have been reading a little more than usual. Have only just picked up Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
It isn’t exactly brand new but some of its insights are still worth considering.
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba has created the 4 Fs of citizen marketers. This is an elegant idea which distills some of the types of bloggers and new media activists you find in the blogosphere.