Word of Mouth

Most of us have heard someone say, or have even said ourselves that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. Well, I recently joined The Society for Word of Mouth. I joined mostly out of curiosity but believe like most things that start this way I’ll end up learning along the way. The society has a straightforward, two-fold purpose:

1. To be a free social network for the true believers of word of mouth (or the merely curious);
2. To be a premium educational resource for making word of mouth fundamental to the DNA of any organization.

Most every company, organization, etc. still considers word of mouth to be a viable form of advertising. It just so happens that today the technological landscape has expanded our word of mouth options exponentially. No longer do you have to depend on the literal exchange of words from one mouth to another. And no longer are you limited to only a few sets of ears while sharing these words from your mouth. Today’s word of mouth movement is propelled by a nearly limitless variety of communication options. The company who fails to at least consider all of these options in their advertising strategy limits their reach and this the effectiveness of their campaign. Check out the Society

Client Challenges

Phil Johnson has a great post in Ad Age’s Small Agency Diary; The Joys and Sorrows of Dealing With Clients. He has a couple of interesting theories, one being that

large corporate structures breed and allow a level of bad behavior that would be unacceptable in almost any other social environment.

I have seen this play out on multiple occasions and it’s not pretty.

I think many companies would be appalled by the behavior of some of their employees. These bad behavior types are literally misrepresenting the company. From the Account Service side this is not something we can necessarily change because we can’t cure their bad behavior. What we can change is how we respond to someone else’s bad behavior, and that in turn can impact their behavior. Notice I said impact.

I don’t believe it’s our job to cure the behavior of someone else, instead it’s our job to respond appropriately to their bad behavior. Frequently that means being direct, honest and confrontational in a kind and fair way. Occasionally it just means choking down the words you’d like to say in response. And, response is the key word here. Always respond, never react!

Christvertising

I was reading Jaffe Juice yesterday and he mentioned this site. If you’ve been exposed to very much Christian advertising you’ll either find it very humorous or it’ll piss you off. At first I thought it was real, because he spoofs it so well. Then I decided it couldn’t be real. I did a little research and discovered it really is meant to be humorous and not taken seriously. 

People’s comments are all over the map, including those who are irritated that someone would find humor in something they consider to be so sacred. I mean no disrespect but these people need to get over themselves and their idea that God and laughter can’t be tied to one another. Have you taken a look at Christian advertising lately? Unfortunately much of it is very laughable, even when it’s supposed to be serious. The bar needs to be raised significantly if Christian marketers want to be taken seriously, 

If you think the site is funny you need to check out this clip. If the site offended you then you should probably steer clear of Dr. VanPelt, and may God bless your brand.