Brands and WOM

"Dolphin-safe tuna" is now the norm, the ubiquitous, ethical choice, for those purchasing a can of tuna. It's been nearly 20 years since StarKist first began providing this option for tuna in 1992. And, while the implications of that once new, ethical tuna choice, may have faded away into the distant past, Richard Edelman points out in his new post "We're Entering a New Era of Mutual Social Responsibility," just how important that move was. The product change was the direct result of NGO pressure, and Edelman thinks we're entering into an even more mutually interdependent stage between customers and providers of products.

Jason Roe, Irish freelance web designer/developer, was poking around on Ryanair's website when he found an interesting usability bug which "allowed users to obtain a 0.00 charge for their flights."

In short, Roe found a trick to fly for free.

Roe was quick to point out that he did not complete any transactions at the steep cost of £0.00, but did think it was relevant that someone from Ryanair should know of the error and perhaps even work to rectify the problem.

The response he received from Ryanair was unbelievably bizarre, and incredibly, brazenly, rude:

jason!
you're an idiot and a liar!! fact is!
you've opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it!...

It goes on like this.

For a grocery store, Trader Joe's has a certain power over people; it is certainly the beneficiary of a lot of positive, self-motivated, customer WOM. The latest piece of customer-created WOM for Trader Joe's is what David Armano calls "The Best Little Ad Trader Joe's Never Made," a three minute YouTube video set to the Brazilian samba tune of Águas de Março (you'll know it when you hear it).

The 3 minute spot, filmed, written and sung by a TJ's customer, is already a viral hit. With over 100 comments and 33,000 video views, the beneficiary of this WOM is undoubtedly Trader Joe's. But, David Armano points out that when fortunate situations like this occur, a company still has to be proactive and utilize the positive WOM in the best way possible.

Fanta, the neon-colored popular drink in Europe and now too the United States, is a relative unknown to our Canadian friends up north.

Coca-Cola, which owns Fanta, looked to change that by hiring Canadian agency Taxi 2 to generate some Fanta buzz. Taxi 2 didn't run a series of bus-advertisements, or commercials, or magazine inserts.

Instead, they built puddles into a mall. Fancy puddles. Puddles which make different noises when you step on them. And they took video: http://video.mediapost.com/index.cfm?clientfile=FantaMall.mov

It may seem too simple, perhaps even too cheesy of a gimmick, but it works because it doesn't ask the customer for anything in return.

You may have noticed Pepsi's new logo design, updated, and plastered on billboards since the beginning of 2009. In WOMMA's locale of Chicago, at least, the new Pepsi logo is newly omnipresent on billboards and buses. It's hard to miss.

What you may also have seen is a new presentation file, replete with buzzwords, which comments on the ingenuity of the new Pepsi logo. The document goes on to dissect the new logo and its similarities to,

1) The gravitational pull of the planet
2) Nautilus shells and the Earth's magnetic field
3) The Mona Lisa

Were we to mention no more, you might assume that this document was the creation of Pepsi, or in the very least of an affiliate of Pepsi looking to generate some buzz about the new magnetized Leonardo Da Vinci logo.

To capture the attention of social consumers, brands are discovering that they need to dig deeper than the traditional banner ad. Influence Ads, a new offering from PopularMedia (WOMMA member company), help marketers engage consumers by encouraging them to connect with friends around brands.

Ted Mininni has dipped his hand in the proverbial hot pot that is coffee culture, all because of a successful McDonald's campaign which is challenging now "traditional" coffee culture.

Consider Mininni's reaction to a recent McDonald's ad,
A recent TV ad spot caught my eye, and I have to admit, it made me chuckle. Scene: two average guys are sitting in a highly cultured cafe savoring cappuccinos. One is poring over a book. He sports an arty goatee. The other has a dark turtleneck sweater on with a properly knotted scarf. Both are wearing glasses. This is gravitas. . .
Then, one friend asks the other: “Did you hear McDonald's has cappuccinos now?"
"McDonalds?" the other repeats.
"Yeah."
That's awesome.

"The Most Social Brands of 2008" is a list worth looking at. This top 50 list of the brands most mentioned in social media at the end of 2008 packs a few surprises, like, Ford was mentioned #12, ahead of Nintendo and Mac.

The ads have come and gone. The top ten have been reviewed, the worst ten have been dissected, and that bizarre gold for cash commercial with MC Hammer and Ed McMahon has disturbed us all.

But what may be most interesting about this year's Superbowl commercials is that the television is only a small part of the equation. Every advertisement that was on the tube is now available on the internet, and for many of the advertisers, the television advertisement wasn't even the whole package.

E*Trade, purveyor of the talking babies, provided out-takes of the babies the week leading up to the Superbowl. CareerBuilder.com leaked its ad online hoping for blogger buzz. Pedigree went a step farther by encouraging visitors to view the ad before its actual television spot.

A recent Advertising Age study found that 60% of Americans have scaled back from premium coffees in the past six months, with the mighty Starbucks experiencing a flattening of its froth. Starbucks, long admired by many for building its brand with only a passing interest in traditional advertising, has faced a wave of activity last year from two very well-drilled media marketers in Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's.

WOMMA member company, DEI Worldwide, commissioned OTX to conduct a research study on Online Social Media Behavior and its impact on Word of Mouth (WOM). The study shows that consumers rely on various types of social media websites as much as company websites for product and brand information.

If your company has a burgeoning influencer marketing program, or if you are just starting conversations about developing a influencer campaign, you don’t want to miss this call. Presented by the co-chairs of the Influencer Marketing Task Force, WOMMA will present its Influencer Handbook, which focuses on defining influencers and influencer marketing; identifying influencers; influencer marketing guidelines; as well as suggestions for working with influencers.

This call is scheduled for Thursday, Dec 11, at 2:00 p.m. CST, and is designed for brands and non profit organizations only.

In the wake of the recent Motrin IB "pain in the neck" advertising debacle, which saw Motrin inadvisably criticizing new mothers, the aversion of similar large companies to social media emerges once again. But, as What's Next Blog points out, this is a ridiculous fear. If big companies can own their own social media space, they'll prosper, not falter.

With respect to the Motrin, What's Next explains that "instead of responding with their own good-natured and humorous response, Motrin has remained deadly serious, ending up looking rather silly."

What's Next continues:
"Big brands: you’re the man now, dog, and the woman.

Fresh off this year's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit, we'd like to present to you a quick Japanese comparison to the WOMMIE Award Winner "What Came First? How McDonald's Got America Buzzing About Chicken." At the Summit, Heather Oldani of McDonalds and Rick Wion of GolinHarris spoke about the WOM campaign to launch the McDonald's breakfast chicken sandwich.

One of their cheapest ideas was to send out street teams in NYC to do the chicken dance on "dance like a chicken day." The result? One of the street teams was even invited by a NY morning show to dance live for millions across the nation. The blog "Everybody Loves Free Stuff" hasn't missed a beat, pointing out the slightly more colorful and well-adorned Japanese version of McDonald's street teams.

An edgy Johnson & Johnson video ad for Motrin that riffed on the trend of new mothers "wearing their babies" in slings and wraps, saying the devices cause back and neck pain, created an uproar in the blogosphere. The ad implied that Motrin would help moms deal with what it called "a good kind of pain." Apparently, many bloggers took offense to the ad and what they considered an unnecessary critique of new mothers. They blasted the ad on the social networking site Twitter, with quite a few suggesting a Motrin boycott.