For at least 7 years I have been railing against CRM’s claims to provide a 360 degree view of each customer. When I initially started working with conversational intelligence back in 1999, I was talking to a few key people about the fact that CRM systems did not accurately account for any given customer’s online behaviour and their offline conversations - but we could fix that with some software I was striving to create. Even after it was built though, we would still be missing a good chunk of understanding concerning the potential impact of any given customer for good or bad. This was because we had no way of knowing what exactly people were talking about with their family, friends and co-workers… until now at least.

Our keynote speaker for the event on Friday, Ed Keller of the KellerFay Group, has just released some of his firm’s TalkTrack research findings regarding consumer’s real world conversations about brands. According to the company’s press release, TalkTrack is “the first continuous monitoring system of all marketing relevant conversations in America, in whatever form they occur, including face-to-face, telephone and internet.”

Ed will be talking about the results and some of the surprising insights they found in their research on Friday morning at Beyond Blogging 2006. We have included the official press release here for you to download as part of this blog post, so I won’t get into too much detail here - however, I do want to speak to a couple of particularly poignant aspects of their findings.

• The survey included conversations from 1,507 Americans ages 13-69 relating to 11,000 conversations and over 6,000 mentions of specific brands
• 92% of marketing-relevant word of mouth takes place “offline” (71% in person and 21% via telephone)
• 62% of marketing-relevant discussion is described as “mostly positive,” while only 9% is described as “mostly negative”
• The average American discusses specific brands in ordinary discussion 56 times per week
• Email, instant message and online chat rooms/blogs comprise 6% of word of mouth

While this seems to finally provide the statistical proof that Word of Mouth Marketers have long sought, the relatively low impact of the Internet is a surprise, especially given the fact that The Internet was the most frequently cited media channel referenced in brand-related buzz. I for one am interested in getting more of the details of the report and asking Ed some more questions about the findings. On both a personal and professional level this is very exciting for me. It is something I have always had to make assumptions about in my discussions with others - now I can cite real research that is ongoing and will improve greatly over time, providing even greater insights along the way.

For some reason, reading the press release made me think about a very small nuance of Word of Mouth that has a huge potential impact to the nature of the industry. For some reason Word of Mouth is seemingly more associated with Marketing than communications. In asking Ed about this, he felt strongly that the reference to marketing in this context includes communications professionals as well as advertisers and other folks in the different arenas of the marketing tent.

When I read that MediaVest EVP Jim Kite had said “that word of mouth represents a very big opportunity for marketers, with significant implications for both media buying and creative strategies” it made me look at the WOM industry in a different light. It became clear for me that the big problem with WOM was one of perspective. Most notably from those who hold the still eroneous belief that conversations can be controlled like a carefully crafted piece of marketing communications. In reality, we are able to inform, influence and persuade people, but ultimately the product/service is what really creates word of mouth.

No matter what many very bright people in the industry tell me, I just don’t see a media buyer purchasing 5,000 word of mouth units for a campaign as being a realistic practice (though I undersand that people are doing this today). While the results of WOM campaigns are clearly trackable, which is a key benefit, the consumer’s demand for authenticity within the broader conversation creates an environment that will reject any efforts to control a conversation and generate undeserved buzz. Many of the brightest minds I know have been thinking about what makes one brand take off as another comparable brand stagnates - no one has really come up with any insights of note as far as I know.

The TalkTrack findings point to the power of media and advertising to influence the nature of conversations, which is a key strength of communications firms and one of the main reasons my money is on the Communications agencies over advertising agencies as the industry matures. The core disciplines of traditional Public Relations (such as writing articles and talking to journalists) have more relevancy in my view than the ability to segment audiences and determine pricing strategies. Ultimately though, the real winners will be those professionals who have a cross-disciplinary understanding of all the relevant skill-sets with a solid foundation built on understanding and interacting with people.

Yes, marketing programs can incentivize and reward desired behaviour as IMG Direct does with its referral program paying bounties to the new customer and the customer who referred them, but it would seem to me that more people share their brand related stories in response to a positive and unexpected product or customer service experience. How many people really become ‘raving fans’ because of a bounty program or loyalty rewards? My guess is that more customers become raving fans because of the experience they have with the company (ie, its products, services and people) then those that are driven by the financial reward. This is ostensibly the biggest problem with hiring agents to artificially create buzz - if the product or service experience is not congruent with the buzz, you can’t get very far over the long term.

You may be able to make some short term impact with WOM programs, but unless you really understand your customers and have met one or more of their real needs, it will only be a flash in the pan. Most people today are seeking more reality and less Corporate speak. More high touch and less high tech. Organization’s clearly need to embrace communications strategies that account for word of mouth and try to influence the conversation in positive ways in regards to their organization. I am 100% in favor of continuing to experiment with different techniques and protocols with regards to finding WOM programs that work. Still, I am worried by what I perceive to be the potential for using WOM tools for inappropriate or unethical purposes.

I guess I am really advocating a very simple, but very important value based ideology when it comes to WOM - just keep it real. Don’t just monitor conversations and react, really listen and respond as you would to help a friend. Perhaps the one’s you listen to will become friends, or even ‘raving fans’. Don’t just try to get more ‘mentions’ to increase the quantity of buzz out there, cultivate quality contributions to the conversation from the real ‘Influentials’.

Perhaps it would be interesting to get a sense from future TalkTrack survey participants in regards to their perceptions of the trustworthiness of the organizations they talk about. How much they believe what the company has to say and also perhaps what they think of other consumers who relate to those brands. Regardless of my personal perspective on the nature of WOM, I know I am going to be paying closer attention to Ed Keller’s work in this arena. He clearly has developed something that provides immense value for modern communications and marketing professionals. To quote Ed,

“The fact that the average American talks about brands more than 50 times per week — which is a huge number — signals to marketers that it would be wise to seek ways to join in these conversations.”

While many of us have been encouraging just such an approach for many years - Ed has set out to prove the value and importance of getting involved - this could be the turning point for many executives in charge of big brands. For this and so many other reasons, I am happy to have this opportunity to meet Ed Keller and learn even more from him this Friday.