Word-of-Mouth Case Studies and Insights from the WOMMA Summit
Last week, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) held it's third annual summit in Las Vegas. Thanks to Mike Spataro of Visible Technologies for attending the three-day event, and recapping some of the highlights on his blog.
- If you're looking for some great word-of-mouth case studies, take a look at this year's Wommie award winners from Affinitive, Converseon, Fanscape, and Quicken Loans. All are great, but I still think Nintendo takes the cake this past year for the WII launch.
- One of the best answers I heard during the show was "I don't know," from Bruce Ertmann, Corporate Manager for Consumer Generated Media at Toyota, when asked what was the ROI resulting from his online efforts. Too many people are hung up at the moment at thinking they have to have a comprehensive ROI model before getting involved, while smart brands know they don't need a methodology to have an honest one-to-one conversation with their customers.
One of the highlights for me was Richard Tait's keynote. He is the Grand Poo Bah over at Cranium, which is a company that makes games for all ages...What impressed me the most is how Richard set out to create a company culture who believes in that concept and it shows. Spending a few minutes on their company blog will give you a sense of that culture. I also noticed that their recent 12 Thanksgiving Questions post got over 1,200 comments in a single day. But Cranium's doing more than building a passionate community (Craniacs in their vernacular)--they've grown to become the third largest company in their market behind Mattel and Hasbro. Since the majority of their marketing has been driven by word of mouth, they've earned that spot with only a fraction of the marketing budget of their competition.If you have the time, it might be worthwhile to download some of the presentations, which include "Best Practices (Not Just the Basics)" and "WOM Tools: Ten Tools to Spread the Word."