Those same car spots where you have guys yelling about the best deal…yada yada bs.

Another reason it doesn't work is because people are choosing wrong mediums. I don't know anyone who has cable that doesn't have DVR…therefore, TV advertising is a waste – unless you have a good $1.5 million or more for one super bowl commercial. Even those have been lame lately.

Please do not think however, that I am disagreeing with word of mouth. I do not at all, I agree with you in the aspect that first a company needs to create genuine and authentic responses to their product (not paid actors). Then, on the right medium…like radio…share that response. All radio is, is word of mouth on steroids. I am in radio, so of course I lean that way…but I'm 26 and controlling my destiny so I CHOOSE to be in a medium that I believe really works.

One frustration I do have, is when the “older generations” buck what input we do have. For instance, I proposed my station signing up and selling station tweets. My old school programming director decided that our 250 followers and start we have on facebook was a better use of our time! For god sakes, listen people! We aren't dumb asses! We have a voice, we have 1.1 million people listening and we only have 250 followers on facebook!! Anyways…thats a rant for another day.

Those same car spots where you have guys yelling about the best deal…yada yada bs.

Another reason it doesn't work is because people are choosing wrong mediums. I don't know anyone who has cable that doesn't have DVR…therefore, TV advertising is a waste – unless you have a good $1.5 million or more for one super bowl commercial. Even those have been lame lately.

Please do not think however, that I am disagreeing with word of mouth. I do not at all, I agree with you in the aspect that first a company needs to create genuine and authentic responses to their product (not paid actors). Then, on the right medium…like radio…share that response. All radio is, is word of mouth on steroids. I am in radio, so of course I lean that way…but I'm 26 and controlling my destiny so I CHOOSE to be in a medium that I believe really works.

One frustration I do have, is when the “older generations” buck what input we do have. For instance, I proposed my station signing up and selling station tweets. My old school programming director decided that our 250 followers and start we have on facebook was a better use of our time! For god sakes, listen people! We aren't dumb asses! We have a voice, we have 1.1 million people listening and we only have 250 followers on facebook!! Anyways…thats a rant for another day.

The second part to this is, *if* the advertising did generate brand awareness, is it targeted? Is it memorable? Is there a follow-up, or is the brand hoping for a serendipitous meeting of customer and opportunity to purchase?

My third question is – if all of these things are actually in place (a miracle IMO), why would someone need to use traditional advertising in the first place? At this time, most non-traditional forms of advertising are far cheaper because there are free tools to target consumers. The cost to reach a targeted consumer is much less.

So I think traditional advertising can work for brand awareness in very rare cases – for example, that awesome Heineken commercial with the women screaming over the walk-in closet and the men screaming over the walk-in refrigerator. Though a) I still don't buy Heineken beer and b) it did take me at least 3 or 4 times of seeing the commercial to even remember which brand had actually produced it – and I'm in marketing for a living!

Unless they went to Yelp and read the reviews – that would probably tip them off.

I think the biggest mistake these small businesses are making is that they don't actively ask customers for a *good* review on Yelp when these customers express satisfaction in person. There should be a process where you find a way for people who love your service to talk about it on a public forum. If you are still in business, you probably have more people that like you than hate you, so this should combat the negative word of mouth influence you talk about.

Thanks for the comment!

Ted Wright here. I wanted to start off by thanking Monica for a world-class summary of the whys and hows of WOMM. I'd be lucky to work with Monica one day.

Great conversation through out. I thought I'd chime in on two points.

@Ashish Treat B2B just as you would B2C when it comes to WOMM. People who buy enterprise wide goods and services whether we are talking about paperclips or software systems are just as influenced by the Influencers in their field as they would be in their hobbies or other interests. Put another way, everyone is always looking for the shortest root to the best answer. One trusted and knowledgeable source sharing info with someone they know is very powerful and this power does not diminish by the size of the purchase or a B2B vs. B2C distinction.

As for the @marydean comment about the efficacy of negative and positive WOMM, those data points are different than the way that I would have answered that question but I don’t have the data at my finger tips to support either way so I am going to reach out to Brad Fay who is the world's foremost expert on this question and I will post back his results.

Thanks again everyone for such a robust conversation. I look forward to more in the future.

Ted
ted@fizzcorp.com
twitter: fizz_womm