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  • WOM Case Study: Introducing a New Car in a Down Market

    Pat McCarthy 8:24 am on September 1, 2010 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , , , WOM Case Study,

    This campaign won a Silver WOMMY in the Engagement category for 2009.

    Introducing a car into the Canadian market in the throes of a recession is gutsy. If that car is futuristic and literally named Cube, it seems downright mad. Nissan and Capital C were undeterred when they figured an unconventional car needed an unconventional entrance into the Canadian market.

    You + Car = Brand

    Nissan wanted to reach the Urban Gen Y audience, the most likely group to appreciate the small and fun image of the Cube. Traditional advertising was thrown out the window. Instead, Capital C planned to give away 50 Cubes via audition to the most creative people who wanted them. Through street teams, community managers and a lot of social interaction, 7,000 Canadians applied for a chance to audition. From them the top 500 were selected to compete by uploading any and all forms of content to the community page, Hypercube.ca. The best 50 creators were awarded a Nissan Cube.

    The Results:

    1. The sales goal of 300 cars per month was exceeded by 20 cars.

    2. Awareness among Urban Gen Yers rose from 13% to 32%.

    3. Over $1 million (USD) in earned media - 30 newspaper articles, 35 blog posts, 5 TV interviews & 3 radio interviews.

    4. The community lives on with members contributing content at cubecommunity.ca.

    ——————————

    Do you have a case study that could rival this one? Submit it today at: http://womma.org/WOMMY/

     

  • What is Social CRM?

    Pat McCarthy 8:21 am on September 1, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , ,

    Many definitions have popped up to describe exactly what social CRM (SCRM) is. When it comes to implimenting SCRM, many brands have trouble even knowing where to begin or what to expect.

    Let’s start with presence. Once your brand is in the social arena, you will encounter two types of interaction with consumers: direct and indirect. The first comes when a consumer asks you a question and, hopefully, you answer it. The second is more difficult because it requires a brand to proactively find consumers who have questions or comments that are not directed toward your brand.

    Those are the basics, but making an SCRM work in a complex existing system requires much more hurdle jumping. The cited article goes into depth on how to integrate a SCRM program into your existing communications.

    Read the full article at Visible Technologies’ blog

     

  • WOM is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

    Pat McCarthy 8:19 am on September 1, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    The folks at Mashable are saying that this summer’s Old Spice campaign has “set the standard marketing experts will admire and follow in the years to come.” Quite the statement indeed!

    Sales certainly did increase, but how will they look in one year. Viral success quickly vanishes, as we have seen with the Evian Babies and the John West Bear Fight. What matters is how you follow up the video. Do you funnel the captive audience to a certain destination? Do you provide an opportunity for participation?

    No doubt the Old Spice Man has set many standards, but if sales slowly teeter off, it will also prove that the best viral video is just a sprint without a solid community engagement effort.

    Read more about the marathon and the sprint at 1000heads

     

  • WOMMA Members in the Spotlight

    Pat McCarthy 8:16 am on September 1, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags:

    WOMMA is proud to announce a returning member, a little mom & pop internet shop known as Google; and our newest member Charles Schwab.

    Alterian Aquires Intrepid

    Their announcement said: In acquiring Intrepid, we have considerably strengthened our social media engagement solution, and demonstrated our commitment to providing best-in-class packaged solutions as part of a wider integrated marketing strategy.

    Read the full announcement here.

    Competition Alert: AARP wants you to blog your way to Orlando. This is your chance to blog your way to AARP’s Orlando@50+ event, a gathering of 25,000 AARP members for three full days of exhibits, concerts, and wide ranging information sessions including health, fitness, travel, sex and relationships, volunteering, technology skills, and much more, along with three full nights of events and meet-ups. Orlando@50 runs from September 30-October 3 in, you guessed it, Orlando.

    More here

     

  • WOM Case Study: Kashi Makes Cereal Bars Talkable

    Pat McCarthy 10:25 am on August 30, 2010 | 2 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags:

    This campaign won a Gold WOMMY in the Introduction category for 2009.

    The cereal bar market is not only filled with a variety of products but also a lack of consumer-seen distinction. When Kashi wanted to introduce a new bar into the mix, they called on P&G Tremor to create a message that deviated from the standard bland and processed perception.

    Real Messaging for Real Fruit
    P&G Tremor used their community of over 400,000 moms to test new messages that broke with the accepted idea of cereal bars. This tactic relied on the psychology of WOM, where a message is spreadable when it breaks from the norm enough to be seen as new. In the end, two messages rose to the top:
    1. Kashi TLC cereal bars have real fruit you can see and taste, because it’s not covered up by artificial flavors or colors.
    2. Meet the bar that’s not afraid to bare it all. So proud of what’s inside, they wear it outside.
    3. They sent out creative packaging to their community that contained a free bar and coupons for the community member and their friends. The community was also driven to a site where they could take the “Bare Facts Quiz” to learn how Kashi’s bar was different.
    The Results:
    After 23 weeks, and independent data source (IRI) found…
    1. A 23% sales volume increase
    2. 400% increase in product trial among a representative population of women with children.
    3. An estimated 2.2 million conversations.
    4. In 8 weeks, 12,000 product reviews.

    ————————————

    Do you have a case study that could rival this one? Submit it today at: http://womma.org/WOMMY/

     

    • Eric Douglas 11:00 am on August 30, 2010 Permalink

      Nice work. Good to see results beyond # of conversations.
      Did the study attempt to discern between effects of the WOM message vs. the effects of the sample + coupon delivery?

    • Pat McCarthy 10:31 am on September 1, 2010 Permalink

      Great question!

      I reread the full case study and found that the mailer was what initially drove traffic to the website. That created the initial buzz, which then went on to spread online and off. Exact numbers were not provided, but that was the methodology.

  • Budgeting for Social Media

    Pat McCarthy 10:22 am on August 30, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    The persistent., nagging question, haunting many a brand: “How much should we spend on social media, in exact dollars?”

    John Bell, Managing Director at 360° Digital Influence (Ogilvy Public Relations), helps provide an answer to that nagging question, though he admits, “I find it hard to generalize while at the same time am driven to try and do just that. I want to establish some benchmarks based upon all of the brand work I have seen or touched in my job. Clearly what is right for a Unilever may be very different than what is right for a Siemens.”

    So, while Bell can’t provide a cure-all social investment answer, he does see industrywide consistencies involving ” a common trajectory of ’spend’ at least as applied to B2C and separately to B2B.”
    With that in Mind, Bell takes us through that course, touching upon:
    1. Experience in Social Media Tactics (Three Stages of Adoption)
    2. Social Media Business Mindset (Is SM an obligation, or a voluntary adoption?)
    3. Integration Path (What tools, what activities, what strategies?)
    4. …and finally…the Spend Matrix (OK, in the end, Bell does hypothesize a tad at how much it might cost)
     

  • Non-Profit Realities, Augmented

    Pat McCarthy 10:20 am on August 30, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , nonprofit,

    The idea of augmenting reality, of increasing the “level of interaction between people and data,” is everywhere. In the cafe you sit at right now, four people have already checked in. In fact, if that fellow seems to be staring at you, he probably recognizes you from your profile picture. If that fixated gaze is not an augmented level of interaction resultant from data, I don’t know what is.

    In a recent Mashable/Tech piece, Geoff Livingston probes the unison between augmented reality for the non-profit sector. The article acknowledges that the wow factor of many augmented realities, the “cool, new shiny object” factor, only goes so far.

    Explains Christopher Barger, director of global social media at GM, “To me, the biggest challenge is simply finding a reason to do it beyond ‘we’re using augmented reality…. Whenever there’s a hot new technology or application, there’s a lot of pressure — much of it self-imposed — to just dive in or get in there, start using it so that you can say that you are and that you’re cutting edge.”

    With that in mind, Livingston dives into the current mashups of augmented reality and non-profits, the possible uses, and asks the question, “What non-profit uses of augmented reality do you foresee in the near future?”

    Read the full piece at Mashable

     

  • WOM Case Study: Internet Provider Gives Away the Whole Internet

    Pat McCarthy 9:30 am on August 27, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    This campaign won a Bronze WOMMY in the Experiential category for 2009.

    In Belgium, the broadband internet is not cheap. The country’s largest internet supplier, Belgacom, wanted to beat the perception of expensive internet. After all, their slogan was “The Internet Belongs to Everybody.”

    The Owner of the Internet

    To promote their inexpensive “GO” internet package, they created a free online game. Users were allowed to own the internet by simply pressing a button. They remained “Owner of the Internet” until another user pressed the button. The “Owner of the Internet” enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame by being publicly seen by thousands via digital billboards at premier soccer games, on homepages of popular websites, on mobile digital billboards and more. Each user got 10 clicks per day. Whoever owned the internet the longest on any given day won a laptop.

    The Results:

    1. 100,000 Belgians visited the site in week one.

    2. 83,712 people participated in the contest.

    3. In total, there were 1,813,510 visits to the site generated by 224,680 unique visitors.

    4. 50% of visitors shared the site with friends, making it a viral hit.

    —————————-

    Do you have a case study that could rival this one? Submit it today at: http://womma.org/WOMMY/

     

  • Meet the Chief Apology Officer

    Pat McCarthy 9:27 am on August 27, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , ,

    Southwest Airlines has assembled a crack team of apologists to reach out to customers they disappointed. Their main task is following up after all sorts of crummy customer experiences like misplaced baggage, flight delays, and even stuff out of their control like bad weather.

    This is exactly the type of proactive customer care that builds brands. Everybody knows that mistakes will happen with any brand. Customers will inevitably be disappointed at some point. Southwest has decided to embrace this reality.

    Key Takeaway: Outstanding customer care leads to outstanding customer loyalty. Acknowledge your mistakes. Show the customer that the problem is fixed and they’ll remain your customer.

    Read more about the apology team at the Chicago Tribune

     

  • Interview with Andy Sernovitz

    Pat McCarthy 9:25 am on August 27, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!

    Mike Stelzner, Executive Editor of the Social Media Examiner, recently did a great interview with one of the four WOMMA founders and 1st Executive Director, Andy Sernovitz. There was one really stellar takeaway that I wanted to share:

    Word of Mouth Marketing Steps

    Mike: What might be some of the word of mouth marketing steps at a very basic level?

    Andy: I like to talk about the five Ts. If you go to my blog, there’s a download where you can get all of these written up, which is the framework for any kind of word-of-mouth campaign.

    1. Finding the Talkers

    2. Giving Them a Topic

    3. Tools

    4. Taking Part

    5. Tracking

    Read the full explanation of these 5 steps and the rest of the interview at Social Media Examiner.

    —————————

    The other founders of WOMMA are Dave Balter, Jonathan Carson & Pete Blackshaw. Read how WOMMA went from an idea to a movement here.

     

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