Comments on: Thinking differently about word-of-mouth

By: Diffusion in PR « Much ado about nowt

Diffusion in PR « Much ado about nowt — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:59:30 +0000

[...] the diffusion process works, one of the things we can do is identify groups of people who are more suseptible to persuasion and target them instead of the traditional “super [...]

By: Social network analysis and PR « Much ado about nowt

Social network analysis and PR « Much ado about nowt — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:51:57 +0000

[...] the example network, nodes 4 and 5 have the highest closeness centrality. Mat suggested in a recent blog post: Instead of looking for WOM influencers, why don’t we look for areas of high potential — and [...]

By: Andres

Andres — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:36:53 +0000

The iPhone example is a bit unusual in that there seems to be an implicit assumption that if I’m surrounded by iPhone users they’ll all have positive things to say about it.

In my world (a few thousand miles away from rural Hampshire, and probably less saturated with iPhone users) my local WOM would most likely be telling me about the latest Palm phone or Blackberry. It’s a de facto standard in my company (a comms security thing too dull to go into) and while one is free to request another kind of phone, most of the people I know have a shiny new Palm phone.

And all have conflicting opinions. So:

1) In the analysis which looks for people “under social pressure to buy product x” the neighbours/influencers currently using “product x” are only likely to have negative opinions where the switching cost of the product is relatively high. If I buy a car or phone that annoys me, I’m more likely to stick with it: and give negative WOM. If I am a current user of dominos pizza, it’s most likely because I’ve settled on that brand and have something positive to say.

So in the above example, which represents a relatively high switching cost, perhaps 02 should add an additional filter which looks for *former* iPhone users too. If someone has (*gasp*) moved from an iPhone tarrif to another (or has switched from O2 elsewhere) then one might want to flag them as a potential source of negative WOM, muddying the pool surrounding your prospect.

2) I still think that conflicting WOM makes a target a reasonable prospect because at least they’ll likely have a decent level of awareness -a knowledgebase to plug into after you’ve hit them with your brief message.

By: Niall

Niall — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:49:35 +0000

Hi Mat – great post. I suppose, just to poke a whole in the premise…would the act of targetting you be scalable (from a marketing budget point of view)? One could argue that you are a ‘moving target’, no? I suppose that you could counter and say that the effort required to ‘tip’ you is less than one would normally deploy to get an influncer to like a brand.

By: renaissance chambara alias Ged Carroll - Links of the day

renaissance chambara alias Ged Carroll - Links of the day — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:05:48 +0000

[...] Thinking differently about word-of-mouth | mediaczar [...]

By: chris

chris — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:39:29 +0000

Difussion of Innovation. Interesting you raise that because has WOM in terms of technology (if we accept that tech uptake is the greatest driver) evolved beyond early adopters at this stage. And if so. Has it yet reached laggards? Michael Tchong from Ubercool talks about how the language of technology drives the language of society but yet to reach the widder society, the laggards whose conversations still sit more in the real world, the pub, the bingo hall, etc. Is that where we need to engage them rather than in the digital world of facebook and twitter And while early adopters drive the sales of technology does the mass market who drive broader consumption really treat digital as a trusted or rather do they even access it as source of wom influence…

By: Fernando

Fernando — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:05:43 +0000

This is some impeccable thinking.

My first thought is to think about how we can work the Diffusion of Innovation concepts into this, which one would have to do if you were trying to launch a product with this WOM methodology.

By: Improbulus

Improbulus — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:00:51 +0000

Makes sense to me.

And btw – I don’t have an iPhone nor do I feel under any pressure to get one, am quite happy with Android G1!