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A few days ago I spoke to Ben Cooper of Retail Week for his article on how highly targeted and low-cost marketing techniques are attracting recession-hit retailers. Word of mouth and social media are often cited as cheap marketing options, but as I emphasised to Ben, their high comparative value is more important than their [...]
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Barcamp Transparency, organised by our very own Ethicist, Sylwia Presley and sponsored by Google, our good selves and a few others besides, took place this Sunday past at Oxford University Club.
The attendees focussed their discussion on topics related to open government, social media ethics and cyber activism in the form of one hour long, open [...]
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Most Badly Handled WOM Reaction Of The Week award goes to Horizon Realty, a Chicago apartment company who have initiated a libel lawsuit for $50,000 against tenant Amanda Bonnen for her tweet:
This girl has 20 followers. As much as I’d love to agree that a negative episode of WOM that reaches 20 others is worth [...]
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Staff talking about their employers online is one of the thorniest issues around. Companies are increasingly eager to embrace word of mouth and new technologies but also eager not to replicate the recent mistakes of Habitat, Primark and many others who have been on the sharp end of employee WOM gone wrong. So how do [...]
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Great video from Chris Brogan on a WOM-maximised package he recently received. Arriving in a rusty old jar, the intriguing goodies inside were cleverly designed and personalised to get Chris interested - and talking. Be sure to get to the point of where he pulls out the swim shorts - an inspired inclusion…
The package came from [...]
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The New York Times has rooted out some excellent case studies of small businesses thriving by using social media and word of mouth. From San Franciscan Curtis Kimball, who uses Twitter to broadcast news of where his crème brûlée cart will be stationed that day, to Scott Seaman, a B&B proprieter and partner at Christopher’s [...]
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Word of mouth is not kind. It can be inspiring and engaging and insightful, but it is not kind. As Chris Anderson so famously described, we are living in a long tail economy, and huge choice allows us to be keenly discriminating. To succeed in social media with any sort of longevity, a product quite [...]
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ENGAGEMENTdb’s 2009 report links the level of social media engagement to the increase in revenues of the 100 top companies from the 2008 Business Week/ Interbrand Global Brands survey over the past year. The Altimeter Group/Wetpaint study makes the bold claim that ‘the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between [...]
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Two of our biggest bugbears are sponsored conversation and lack of transparency in online word of mouth. So it’s good to see social media ethics hitting the news as New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo orders plastic surgery franchise Lifestyle Lift to pay $300,000 penalties and costs for astroturfing - publishing fake positive consumer [...]
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Richard Stacy is having doubts about the way some companies use sophisticated tools to gather online consumer conversation about brands:
“When I look at all these impressive reports I can’t work out how they help me design and run a social media strategy. They could help me craft a one-to-many message (but that’s called advertising [...]
