Posts Tagged ‘word of mouth’

Getting to Know Chicago Through WOM

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

As a student coming to Chicago for the summer from a small college town, I was immediately awe-struck by the innumerable options of summer festivals, events and concerts that I could choose from.  Although I read about different events each weekend in local papers and on advertisements on the train, as a new-comer to this great city, I was unsure of which festivals to try.

I began opening my ears in the MSL Chicago office and asking my co-workers what their weekend plans were. I discovered the best source of information about Chicago’s abundance of events was right in front of me.

For example, Geralyn, our office manager, was my inspiration to attend the Chicago Blues Festival.  She informed me it was the largest free blues festival in the world and located in nearby Grant Park.  I was amazed at the huge number of event attendees, the many talented performers and the fun and energizing atmosphere.

I realized if I was relying on my co-workers and Chicago friends to find out the best summer festivals to attend, other people were probably doing the same.  This got me thinking about the important of word-of-mouth marketing plays in promoting and creating successful events.

After doing some research, I found I am not the only person more likely to attend events my peers recommend than the events I see in advertisements.  According to Adage.com:

  • Up to 92 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations, but only 24 percent trust online ads.
  • A recommendation from a trusted friend conveying a relevant message is up to 50 times more likely to trigger a purchase compared to another recommendation.

Ultimately, I feel very lucky to be spending the summer in city with so many events to talk about and share with my friends.  A few coming up I am looking forward to include:

What are some of your favorite Chicago summertime events?  What do you think about the growing importance of word of mouth marketing in today’s world?

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Posted in Experiential Marketing, Midwest News | No Comments »

Word of Mouth and Reaching the Masses Today

Friday, May 6th, 2011

News, especially big news, has always had its way of permeating to reach the masses – it’s kind of the reason the group as a whole is called “mass media” in the first place.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (What? Too soon?), you may have heard that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a raid by United States Navy SEALs this past weekend… but HOW did you hear about it?

Odds are it wasn’t from a traditional news source, a newspaper or a newscast, at least not initially.

Tyler Gray, deputy editor of Fast Company, posted to the site that a single Tweet preempted the President’s official announcement – and by a significant margin since all three appeared the same day.

While Urbahn later said that he received his information from a TV news producer, and told his Twitter followers to wait for the official announcement from the POTUS himself, that cat got out of the bag and wasn’t going to go back in.

Across the country, Dan Shulman was calling the ninth inning of ESPN’s Sunday night Mets-Phillies game when his colleague in the booth, Bobby Valentine held up a text message on his cell phone.

The text was simple, according to Shulman, reading only “Bin Laden is dead.”

After confirming the news, Shulman told ESPN viewers – but the Philadelphia crowd had already begun chanting, “U-S-A, U-S-A,” as fans were receiving text messages and checking emails/Twitter/mobile news.

So we have, in essence, literal word of mouth (WOM) from the producer to Urbahn, a Tweet (consider it digital WOM) and a text message (mobile WOM). While The Huffington Post may have their list of 13 Strangest Ways People Found Out Bin Laden Died, WOM (traditional, mobile and digital), is directly responsible for some of the most powerful imagery in terms of the speed of information we have seen in a long, long time.

While it can be said on anecdotal evidence alone that mobile/digital WOM has already become an important factor in news, the PEW State of News Media 2011 report delivered this past March confirms it.

In 2010, every news platform saw audiences either stall or decline — except for the internet.

We can clearly see the shift from static news sources to more dynamic ones, but the report also included information from the survey. Released with the report (produced with the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in association with the Knight Foundation) PEW found that nearly half of all Americans (47 percent) now get some form of local news on a mobile device. What’s more, the report also found that mobile news is only likely to grow.

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Posted in Digital and Social Media, MSL Compass (Media Relations), Mobile Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

The Resurgence of the Telephone Game– Relying on Middle Men to Relay Messages

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

It used to be we segmented communications into categories such as B-to-C. It wasn’t just a shorthand way of summing up who was driving or receiving the communications, it was the actual model – businesses would literally contact consumers directly.

We now live and work in a much more complex communications landscape.  The B-to-C model now has evangelists, ambassadors and messengers in the middle. But are they cluttering the communication model?

The answer, of course, is a firm no.  For businesses, it may seem more cost-effective and faster to bypass the influencer all together, but that’s not the case. They would simply be engaging in a dangerous game of monkey in the middle.

Research shows us that it’s not the man who holds the credibility any more but the middle man. Sixty-four percent* of consumers say they are making smarter purchases by spending more time researching brands and products and making fewer spontaneous decisions. In our culture of constant contact and information sharing, the middle men are the experts, idols and agents who help consumers receive messages and react to them. These influencers are doing the heavy lifting on behalf of the businesses – whether they realize it or not. 

Case in point, when was the last time you received a piece of direct mail and immediately purchased the product or service it was promoting? More likely, you called a friend, or turned to Twitter, Yelp or some other social media platform where you could get real-time feedback about the brand before acting. Those on- and offline contacts are your influencers.

In our agency, we categorize these influencers into five groups – aspirationals, thought leaders, catalysts, vested and endorsers – appropriately titled for the role they play in shaping thoughts and conversations – and counsel our clients on how to identify and activate the members of these groups.

There’s a whole process behind influencer mapping that I could take you through, but I encourage you to experiment with this idea yourself from a high-level perspective. Who is influencing you? Can you identify someone in each of our five categories who plays a role in your decision making?

*2009/10 Yankelovich Monitor, Frugality among consumers is outliving the recession, AP, May 2, 1010 

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Posted in Influencer Marketing | No Comments »

Word of Mouth Powering the Food Truck Craze

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

DANNY MOLOSHOK / Reuters

Pop quiz: What recent phenomenon combines convenience, community, spontaneity, digital savvy and delicious cuisine? I’m talking about food trucks—gourmet, inventive, upscale, quality and often organic eats that roam the streets and require you to follow them, via social media, to find out where they’ll stop next. 

Back when I lived in L.A., I frequently tracked where Kogi BBQ, The Green Truck or Coolhaus would show up next.  Whether it was 2 a.m. or 4 p.m., buzz on the various trucks’ locations quickly grew via twitter feeds and word of mouth. It seemed like every few weeks, both the number and originality of the trucks grew exponentially.  After settling back in the Midwest, I often wondered why, when cities like San Francisco, NYC, Seattle and Portland were bringing their unique treats to the streets, Chicago wouldn’t take part in the trend.

It would seem I’m not the only one wondering. Professional chefs and eaters across the city are rallying to bring food on wheels to Chicago. Chicago All Fired Up is one truck that has managed to get through the red tape. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been so easy for others, as Chicago’s law that mobile food vendors can’t cook food on-site, along with several other issues, is causing a food revolution unrealized in the Windy City. Despite the setbacks, supportive websites, new Twitter feeds and grassroots campaigns are popping up every day. Entrepreneurs and chefs are coming up with several new concepts and ways to affect change.

Local chefs Philip Foss and Matt Maroni have been working to get our city’s mobile food vendor licenses amended and started chicagofoodtrucks.com, creating both a Twitter feed and Facebook page to provide a forum for discussion and creative solutions. Local Top Chef Master, Rick Bayless, has offered his support via his Twitter feed, and Time Out Chicago recently launched Street Food Now to “speak out on Chicago’s right to eat meals that come on wheels.”  Can you imagine being able to step outside during lunch for fresh macaroni and cheese, meatballs or even flatbread from a parked truck? These are real ideas in the works.

The good news is that you won’t have to wait long for a preview–  another business appears to have the go-ahead beginning May 10. You’ll have to follow Flirty on Twitter or Facebook to find out where you can get sugary goodness like the CBFF (chocolate w/ Nutella ganache) handed to you from a mobile cupcake shop. I assume they bypassed the restrictions because cupcakes don’t require on-site preparation. Hopefully Flirty is one of the many in a long line of Chicago vendors that can successfully join this literal bandwagon. I’m interested to see what happens next– what will supporters do differently or next to persuade lawmakers to change their mind? How big of a role will social media continue to play?

So, what do you do if you’re game for tacos on wheels? Speak up. Time Out Chicago offers a quick tutorial on who to contact and what to say. Do you want Chicago to be the next city to hop on the food truck trend?

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Posted in Digital and Social Media, Food and Beverage, Mobile Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »