By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Word-of-Mouth Cult Joins Berney and Siegel Among Marketing Greats
In a periodically fascinating piece in today’s Variety, columnist Jonathan Bing takes on that ever-abstract, ever-influential marketing lodestar known as word of mouth–and I only say “periodically fascinating” because we already know how Picturehouse’s Bob Berney and publicist Peggy Siegel are among the shrewdest word-of-mouth wonks in New York (if not the entire film industry). And while I am beyond relieved that Anna Wintour has at long last “validated” The Devil Wears Prada, I had to read down to the final third of Bing’s column to take in the summer’s first official “you-have-got-to-be-shitting-me” revelation:
(W)ord-of-mouth marketing has long been overlooked by major consumer brands largely because it didn’t seem to lend itself to the sort of metrics (gross ratings points, costs per thousand, etc.) that a TV campaign does. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has been working hard to change that perception. Next month, it’s holding a conference on “Word of Mouth Basic Training,” otherwise known as WOMBAT, to study the ways in which this marketing practice can, as WOMMA head Andy Sernovitz puts it, serve as a “plannable, trackable part of the marketing mix.” …
“The future is going to be what I call people networks,” said Dave Balter, founder of a Boston-based marketing agency BzzAgent which employs some 180,000 volunteer word-of-mouth agents from coast to coast. “We’re turning our system of agents into a media form. Companies can access them as they access other media forms.”
Bing adds that WOMMA measures its impact in something called WOM Units and that the entire movement is predicated on the theory that networks of people can be managed as strategically as media campaigns can be. I thought WOMMA’s point was that the two were not really separate, but I am genuinely inclined to find out for myself if I can ever pry my ass away from the goddamned Da Vinci Code beat. Oh, wait.
