As November comes to a close, I want to share a somewhat random, but hopefully interesting update of what I have been doing around IWOM, especially the flow of my thoughts. I write this as a follow up to my previous “update” for September and October.

WOMMA

I had the pleasure of attending the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA) annual Research and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas November 12-14. This is sort of the Mecca for those in our industry. Among the highlights included having dinner with Pete Blackshaw (the guy who coined “CGM” and overall brilliant IWOM strategist at Nielsen Online), as well as dinner with leading firms in our space in the US, including MotiveQuest, Radian6 and Visible Technologies. One of the hottest topics was the use of dedicated, branded communities such as those being done by Communispace. My overall take away from WOMMA was that in the West, IWOM itself (in terms of levels of participation and passion) is NOT as developed as China (or Korea and Japan), but IWOM marketing is MORE developed than China, i.e. sophistication and measurement of marking programs is more sophisticated.

IWOM summit

As I mentioned here, CIC is hosting its 2nd annual IWOM summit Roundtable event and it has been keeping me extremely busy throughout the past two months. I met with 15 or so director level executives from our clients to discuss our latest thoughts, including those we are outlining in our The Internet is THE community IWOM White paper series. Whereas last year, the talk was more on “nice to have” vs. “must have” for IWOM, this year it is assumed that IWOM is a “must have” and questions are leading to “what can we REALLY do.” We discussed the tension between the temptation to choose short term execution tactics vs. taking the longer term approach to developing a richer, deeper understanding of IWOM as strategic intelligence. In this regard, the West again is more sophisticated in its understanding of IWOM (detailed research presented at the Research Symposium is perfect proof of this) and therefore has more effective marketing.

IWOM white paper

I mentioned in my last update about reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody and how this confirmed our belief in CIC’s concept of “The Internet is THE Community”. So inspired are we by this concept that we are launching a white paper on the topic in four parts. The core concept is that the Internet Community is able to accomplish things that traditional institutions, like brands or agencies, are unable to accomplish and that the Internet Community is redefining the relationship between brands and consumers. Recognizing that the Internet IS a community (and not just a media) leads to an understanding that having an objective, strategic understanding of IWOM as intelligence can lead to much more effective participation in the community where brands can be fellow “netizens”. Of course, these are some high level ideas, but I have to thank our Intelligence Team for “putting the rubber to the road” and turning such academic thoughts into practical explanations and case studies. They have been tireless in working on the paper, and I am very proud of the results. We don’t charge for these papers…which as CEO sometimes pains me, but I see it as important to share our thoughts with the community to grow a deeper understanding of the power of IWOM and of course to receive feedback. For those of you interested, the full white paper is available on slideshare here and our website here.

AdTech

As I wrote about here, I was thrilled to host some impressive industry leaders in Chinese IWOM on my adtech panel “Internet Word of Mouth in China: Brands Engaging with Real People, Real Talk and Real Community“. It is my 4th time participating in Adtech, and 3rd time hosting a panel on IWOM. Of course, I was not the only one talking about IWOM or related topics as there were topics on social media effectiveness, user generated content etc.

I look forward to sharing more thoughts again next month.