It feels like everyone is talking about Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing – so I guess the WOMMY cobbler's kids have their shoes firmly laced up. Last week I went to the ‘Word Up!’ WOM conference organized by Profectio with a diverse speaker list which included Andy Sernovitz of WOMMA, Rick Murray of Edelman’s me2Revolution, Maxine Friedman of BrandIntel, Brent Hill of Feedburner, and our own Ted Graham speaking about influencer networks.  

Not surprisingly about 80 per cent of the day focused on online opportunities. Is this in synch with the real needs of our clients? I think it's where we're going, but judging by the audience Q&A most marketers are still focused on traditional needs.

Two sessions I really liked were Andy Sernovitz’s overview of the industry and Matchstick's case study on seeding products with bloggers, which included an analysis by Professor Andrea Wojnicki at the Rotman School of Management. I'll write up the blogger case study in a future post, but here are some points from Andy's presentation.

• Andy feels we're in a WOM revolution. Eight-two per cent of Fortune 500 companies say they plan to start a WOM campaign next year...but...people are asking for it without really understanding what it is.
• The trust of people (the word 'consumer' was banished by one of the speakers) is the medium that WOM marketing uses. If marketers pollute that trust, they destroy their own credibility. 
• Word of Mouth means genuine two-way dialogue.  It's no longer about shouting at people, or dumping ads on them. It's executed by giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for that conversation to take place.
• WOM is earned by being remarkable and staying remarkable. Krispy Kreme had great WOM marketing when they were hot out of the oven. When the product became available in gas stations, it was no longer remarkable.  
• Our new reality is that consumers are in control. UA the UE: 'You are the User Experience'. It’s not what your ads are, or your press releases say, it’s what your online users say about you. You can't hide, and there is a permanent record.
• Tools like blogs and emails make the conversation much easier as they're all about forwarding and linking, compared to static web sites or marketing material.

So...thanks Andy, and I'm sure I didn't do it justice. It was an excellent opening for the conference, and I learned some funky new acronyms.

Update: For more on the conference see Buzz Canuck's summary of the day and Dave Forde's link to speaker presentations.