CorpComms Magazine

Imagine for a moment a world that doesn't involve meddling journalists. A world where your corporate message reaches its intended audience without getting mulled over, chewed up and spat out. Sounds like heaven? Well, it may not be that distant a possibility. Marketing experts are championing new approaches to communicate directly with customers. Word of mouth campaigns, viral marketing, pavement art and employing actors to talk about products in public places are all tactics companies have employed in recent years.

'Normally in public relations it's about communicating to the public with the media as a conduit, but the approach we have here is about coming up with ideas that have 'talkability' or buzz factor,' explains Graham Goodkind, chairman and founder of Frank, the consumer PR agency. 'What I'm really interested in doing is creating a buzz without using the media, by appealing directly to the consumer.'

Buzz marketing could also be the way forward for those who increasingly believe expensive advertisements generate relatively little in return. 'Consumers are much savvier and more medialiterate these days; they certainly aren't buying into traditional advertising any more,' says Goodkind.

The rise in consumer power and the increase in the speed at which information is transferred have helped to propel word of mouth marketing to the fore. 'Our whole business has changed - historically we were passive purveyors of information; now it's all about engagement, and you can't control information any more. Individuals are going to other individuals for direction,' comments Jack Leslie, chairman of Weber Shandwick.

Word play

The word of mouth approach could involve anything from a blog or some street art to a group of actors. 'Sometimes we have teams of up to 150 working on a campaign; it completely depends on the brief,' Goodkind remarks. He also set up a marketing agency called Sneeze, which has developed the trademarked 'talkability media', and claims that 'penetrating consumers' personal deflector shields is what it's all about these days.'

Sneeze's most famous prank involved a group of actors who were tasked with increasing subscriptions to a premiership football club's news text messaging service. Despite advertising the service in club literature and on the website, new subscriptions rarely exceeded 20 a week. At 25p a message, or potential revenues of around £100 a year per subscriber, the club was desperate to improve the numbers.

Sneeze briefed the actors to go into pubs with a petition for one of their friends who had allegedly been sacked after repeatedly receiving the club's texts and then shouting the news across his workplace. They got 4,000 names on the petition and, more importantly, hundreds of takers for the text messaging service. In the first week alone, subscriptions rose to 120 sign-ups.

In the US, when Sony Ericsson launched its first mobile phone that could take pictures, it hired a group of 60 actors to take to the streets in 10 cities and pretend they were tourists. They would approach somebody and ask, rather innocently, 'Would you mind taking a picture of us?' Inevitably, the 'victim' would be impressed by the product and ask for further information.

Careless talk costs

Campaigns such as these have received a great deal of coverage recently, leading some to question the practice often known as 'stealth' marketing. 'We would always advise our clients to stay away from stealth campaigns because in this environment what can be known will be known,' explains Leslie.

Paul Rand, president and chief executive of word of mouth marketing agency Zócalo, agrees. 'There have been campaigns where people have tried to hide something and they've been found out within minutes by the blogosphere,' he explains.

The US-based Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), the industry's self-regulating body, has even published a code of ethics in response to fears that companies are trying to synthesise buzz. 'We at WOMMA are trying to draw a very firm line in our ethics - if people begin to doubt word of mouth, it becomes no better than any other form of marketing,' says Jim Nail, who sits on the association's executive board.

'As marketers we run the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot,' agrees Rand. 'If people start to think everything they see on the internet is planted, websites lose their credibility and effectiveness.'

'That's where our code of ethics, honesty of relationship and honesty of opinion come in,' adds Nail. 'If you fail to announce your relationship with the product being promoted, you're on the wrong side of the line.'

Unfair play?

Some companies have already fallen foul of the rules. Wal-Mart's faux blog made the headlines last year with its 'Wal-Marting across America'. 'Two bloggers started travelling across the country, stopping at Wal- Mart parking lots and blogging about their experience. To all appearances it was genuine,' explains Nail.

But it soon transpired that the bloggers had been hired by Wal-Mart's PR firm. 'It ended up being a very big black eye for Wal-Mart and its PR company,' Nail adds. Rand believes Wal-Mart could have avoided the backlash if it had included a line on the blog indicating that it was the retailer's creation.

Sony also got exposed when it emerged the child blogger who was supposedly hoping for a Playstation Portable for Christmas was actually a hoax. 'One single incident isn't going to bring down a brand like Sony or Wal- Mart but, on the other hand, a brand is fundamentally an item of trust,' Nail warns. 'You are undercutting trust - and over time that can do tremendous damage.'

So when does a sneaky marketing campaign become stealth marketing? 'I don't think there is too much of a grey area when it comes to stealth advertising,' says Nail. 'When you see someone dressed up as a banana it's reasonable to assume it's some kind of promotional marketing activity. On the other hand there have been these other examples of people who go into bars and order brand X and extol the virtues of brand X, the clear difference here being that people have no way of associating that activity with marketing operations.'

Goodkind believes a lot of the furore is down to good old-fashioned jealousy. 'I think traditional advertising agencies are trying to give buzz marketing a bad name,' he asserts. 'But you could argue that all advertising is stealth.' He cites examples of companies that practice neuro-marketing, where advertisers wire up volunteers to see how their brain waves react to various messages being broadcast. 'To me that's more stealth-like than employing a few actors to generate buzz,' he adds.

Whatever your stance on the ethics of the marketing, there is no denying that individuals are increasingly suspicious of glossy PR messages. 'I think we are seeing widespread cynicism,' asser ts Leslie. A recent sur vey conducted by Weber Shandwick found that more than 25 percent of respondents say their first port of call for information on a product or company was another individual, rather than the company's own website. 'In a few years we expect that to be over 50 percent,' Leslie adds.

Making friends and influencing people The importance of other individuals' opinions in decision-making has led marketers to start targeting and profiling those who are making waves in the opinion-forming space.

Another Weber Shandwick study, entitled 'The new wave of advocacy', reveals that decision-making among consumers has accelerated over the past few years. Of those polled, around 63 percent report they are deciding more quickly to support or reject issues, causes, companies, products and services.

'Advocacy is what we call individuals being actively engaged with issues and products and it's happening in numbers and at speeds we've never seen before,' says Leslie. 'It's partly technology and partly a response to the way our society is evolving.'

The new 'advocates' have been spurred on in part by the range of information available online. 'There are so many more advocates now than previously,' Leslie continues. 'In the past we have thought about opinion leaders, those of a higher demographic. Now we're seeing that nearly half of global respondents took action in a way that put them into the advocate camp, in that they actually solicited an opinion on a product or issue.

'The typical advocate influences at least 50 other people. So if you can find the high intensity advocates and tap into them, you can have a huge multiplier effect.'

The buzz world

Framed within this context of empowered advocates, there is vast potential for spreading messages virally; the key is getting the approach right. Nail argues that honest buzz marketing will allow you to reap the benefits of word of mouth without getting you into hot water. 'It's sometimes very hard for a brand to accept that people don't like something about its product. Marketers don't like those messages but when a company listens it can generate greater loyalty,' he explains.

Nail points to companies like software firm Intuit. It includes product users in its blogs and discussion boards as part of its community site. 'That kind of responsible attitude is much more credible,' he adds. 'Marketing has tried forever to create a picture of perfection but I think in these sceptical days no one expects everything to be perfect.'

Does all this mean an end to traditional marketing? Rand doesn't think so. 'Already I'm getting clients telling me that as soon as they stopped the buzz campaign their sales reverted to their original level,' he points out. He argues that word of mouth marketing is best as part of a wider effort. 'It is rarely a stand-alone campaign and it's not going to abolish the role of traditional media,' he adds. And Leslie agrees. 'Our research shows that the traditional mode of communicating is just as effective, but it's understanding how to use it and who it's targeting that's important,' he notes.

Spreading the word

'I think what we are seeing now is many companies going beyond what we would call buzz campaigns, and trying to work out how to create sustainable brand evangelism rather than just a quick buzz campaign,' adds Rand. He concludes that stunts do very little to build your brand over a sustainable period of time. 'We are getting more sophisticated and I think we are going to see fewer stunts and more focus on creating sustainable word of mouth in the future,' he says.

So it would seem journalists can rest easy: buzz marketing is not about to render them unemployed, nor will buzz be the death of television advertising. 'Mass media will always have a role to play,' concedes Rand. 'Even if you look at the success of the buzz campaign for the iPod, it still moved to mass media advertising in the end - just later in the brand campaign cycle.' Rather than swapping one for the other, perhaps traditional and buzz marketing can complement each other - because each has a role to play.

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