Buzz Canuck

7 Questions with Andy Sernovitz, CEO of GasPedal, Author of Word of Mouth Marketing and Former Head of WOMMA

If word of mouth marketing was a religion (and to some of us, it almost is) than Andy Sernovitz would be our Mohammed.

For years Andy has been able to ringlead this rag tag industry of mavericks, big thinkers, opportunists and evangelists into a tightly bound segment of marketing/media practitioners  who share some insight, values and practices about word of mouth and how things should gety done in the modern marketplace and media aisle..

He was instrumental in the development  of the trade association WOMMA, wrote the book on word of mouth appropriately titled - Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (a fixture on my bookshelf) , authored the most commonly stated code of ethics for social media and now, beyond his consulting at GasPedal , lecturing at Northwestern, blogging at Damn I Wish I Thought of That, he has also conspired to build a new organization called the Corporate Blogging Council.

Beyond a finely tuned and buzzed about pedigree, Andy is a great friend and colleague and always an interesting conversation, here are the 7 questions I threw at Andy when we chatted last.....

1) You've recently moved from being president of WOMMA back to your days as an entrepreneurial rainmaker - enjoying the shift?

It's fun to be back in the startup game again. I'm definitely a startup kind of guy.  But there is one thing I miss: the platform that WOMMA gave me to speak out and lead the fight on ethics.  I'm still a
passionate advocate on ethics issues, but it sure helps to have 400 committed companies in your corner helping to spread the word.

2) You've had a lengthy ride with word of mouth, what topics have become more prominent and what issues have become less prominent as time marches on with WOM?

I love the fact that we're not really talking about technology any more. We have so many great, easy, and often free tools.  If I want a blog or community I can get it launched in an hour. It takes away the IT excuses that prevent companies from trying these things.

3) If you're like me, you likely look at the current marketplace and cry out in horror with some marketing practices, what is a WOM  idea whose time has come and yet you haven't seen it happen yet?

I'm still flabbergasted at the companies that haven't done the basics yet. They have spent more staff time trying to research the hypothetical ROI of a blog or community that they could have just done it and found out.  That's why I love the Blog Council members (http://www.blogcouncil.org) -- they are the ones who are doing it.

4) The line between your professional brand - GasPedal and your personal brand is a little bit blurry, is this the wave of everybody's future or just the way you like to run a transparent consultancy?

Actually, one of my biggest challenges this year is to separate the two. I had the option to make it a personal brand, making a good living as a consultant and speaker.  But there's no way to grow it.  So I hired an awesome team of smart people who are building the GasPedal brand and an independent brand not dependent on me. We call it "deAndyfication". Either direction would have fine, it's just a personal choice. Think Seth Godin vs. Don Peppers.

All companies using social media correctly are going to have a lot more personal personality injected onto the corporate brand.  The important thing is to be aware of where the lines are, and manage it.  Dell has strong centralized corporate social media, where the corporate brand is first. Microsoft has thousands of individual voices, and less central social media messaging.  Both are good.

5) Smart distinction  company head vs. company operations this time around and cool new urban dictionary term ...deandyfication ..sounds like a little bit of Good to Great is slipping into your leadership skills repetoire, Andy. Let's forget about you, I like how you boil WOM down to its bare essence, for the legions of wannbe WOM marketers out there, care to topline your 5 things to get right about generating buzz from your book Word of Mouth Marketing?

Follow the 5T's of word of mouth marketing and you'll get it right every time:

Talkers: Find The People Who Like To Talk
Are they your customers? Neighborhood moms? Doctors? Bloggers? Think about the people who are most likely to tell a friend about what you are doing. Make sure they know about your new topic of conversation.

Topics: Give Them a Reason to Talk
Give people a reason to talk about you. It doesn't need to be fancy. A special sale, good service, a neat new feature, a better flavor, a funny package. (Remember the Gateway computers that came in cow-patterned boxes?)

Tools: Help the Message Spread Faster and Farther
Do everything you can to make it easy for talkers to pass along your topic. Include postcards and stickers in the box when you ship a package. Put up a chat room so people can talk to each other. Join a blog conversation. Hand out samples. (Did you ever get one of those emails with a "secret" coupon that was supposedly for employees only? Did you forward it?)

Taking Part: Join The Conversation
Conversations die out when there's only one person talking. When people are talking about you, answer them. Reply to their email. Comment on blogs that write about you. Send a lot of thank-you notes.

Tracking: Measure and Understand What People are Saying
The word of mouth conversation is the best feedback you're ever going to get. It's far better than any other kind of market research, because it is the authentic voice of the consumer. Hear what people are saying, learn from it, and use it to be a better company.

6) You once built a fairly large trade organization filled with promo companies, research houses, PR companies, big agencies, boutique firms, digital startups and I'm sure some superheros and crime figures to boot, who rules the roost (or should rule the roost) when it comes to WOM?

On the agency side, the best WOM folks usually have a media relations background. They have deep understanding of WOM skill #1: building trusting relationships with people who will speak for you.

On the client side, the best WOMMers are people with a true love of customers and customer service. You've gotta love people. That cuts across all titles and departments.

7) Despite impressive efforts, the reality is that 2/3rds of purchase decisions are made via WOM and yet only a tiny fraction of that is spent directly on trying to get it, read the tarot cards - is this the ongoing fate for WOM?, or are we reaching a tipping point? or is there some new technology, event, shift that will cause WOM to change its place and importance to companies in the future?

Repeat after me: "Hmmm."  WOM drives lots of our revenue.  We spend nothing on WOM.  So maybe if we started paying attention and investing in it, we'd have more revenue.  Maybe we could spend less on other kinds of marketing. Then we'd have more to spend on the service, support, and innovation that drives WOM.  Which would let us cut our marketing costs. And we could invest more in service, support, and innovation. Ah ha!"

You either get this, or some competitor who does is going to kick your ass.

Well said Andy, until we muse about WOM again.

Could Toronto lose its Grasp on the Centre of Hockey?

Having lived with the travails of the Toronto Maple Leafs for over three losing decades, it has reluctantly been a labour of love.

Growing up, you would have to tear me away from the TV on Wednesday and Saturday night watching the Leafs on TV with my dad. Now, with more demands on my time and more disenchantment  with the cycle of losing and shoddy style of management, even I could go weeks on end without watching a game.

Apparently I'm not alone.

According to the Toronto Star, fewer people are calling themselves "big Leaf fans,"  and fewer kids are taking up the sport for either monetary or cultural reasons.

Tom Anselmi, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment candidly mused. "The Leaf fan is aging and is being replaced." Now that MLSE the parent company has basketball and soccer on their side, the ethnic and aging drift of the sports fan can be mitigated but this is Toronto, self-proclaimed centre of hockey in the world.

Like most big league sports now, the Maple Leafs, in pursuit of short term profit, are pricing themselves out of most audience sgements, even though they have a waiting list of 3,000 names for season tickets, worrisome trends exist about hockey registration, immigration and  Internet use, which are all working against the long term vitality of the Leafs.

Shocking stat - fewer fans (51 per cent in 2007-08 compared to 69 per cent in 2006-07) describe themselves as "big" fans of the club. The Leaf fan is about five years older than a Raptor fan and less ethnically diverse.

With half the citizens of Toronto are new Canadians and by 2018, half the city being classified visible minorities, the sport will have to adopt a lot more Wongs, Mandelas, Romeros and Gandhis into what historically been a domiant white circle.

The Leafs are countering by:

- refurbishing between five and seven arenas a year

- sponsoring equipment drives to help underprivileged kids play the expensive sport.

- growing their Internet and digital presence will grow, with more games online

- hosting more practices will be open to the public, many in neighbourhood arenas.

- the team will use a lottery to sell the 500 or so tickets per game to keep them away from scalpers

So if you were running the Leaf empire, what would you do?

Putting out the Garbage

Honey, could you just check if I did this right?

I always struggle with these damn instructions..

Maps and Social Networks

 I love social media and I love atlases....put them together and what do you have...

..Ignite has a very inventive geographic map of 39 of the top social nets. (Facebook shown here)

Never knew Flixster,  Metafilter, Reddit and Shoutwire were so big in Canada.

And what's with YouTube in Peru? Stumble Upon in India and Ireland? Skyrock in France? Netlog in Turkey? Mixi in Japan? Live Spaces in Italy? Last.fm in Finland? Friendster and Flickr in the Phillipines? and Badoo in Tunisia? ...and for that matter Jerry Lewis in France?

Social Media Breakdown Canada - Who's Fading, Who's In, Who's Spectating and Who's Ignoring

Much like the job,credit and housing market are feeling nervy, social networks are facing pressure in Canada and internationally too.

From a recent 17 country survey by Synovate,  a full 47% of social networked Canadians believe they are losing interest in social nets, and thus the early adopter bloom is off the rose.

The program also described a full 26% who are aware of social nets and have not joined them yet and another 30% who have not joined social networks nor are they aware of them.

A Kiva Update

For many of you  who have seen me speak at conferences, you may recall I dedicate my first presentation slide to a some type of social, word of mouth-worthy cause that deserves our collective attention. For a long period of time, my fave was Kiva.

Why? Partly because of its altruistic mission, party because of its micro-financing success and partly because it excites the donor just as much as the donee.

An article by San Jose Mercury news celebrating Kiva's 3rd year anniversary with some interesting stats:

- 98% of people get their money back
- eightfold growth in loaners and thirteen fold growth in total loan value over the last 18 months
- 333,000 people have loaned money to 59,000 loans worth $42 million
- Average loan size is now $475
- 751 teams currently exist to pool their money and loan together as a microcommunity

Now, word has it that Kiva is prepping to make loans to people located in the United States.

Kudos to Kiva - and hope they get some funding from AMEX members this week. Here is their blog to learn more and their site fo you to get involved and donate to end poverty.  

The Ryder Cup of Word of Mouth, Buzz and Viral

With the advent of golf's best entertainment showcase about to take place, I thought I would provide the WOM version of the famed Ryder Cup tournament.

Why not pit the top 36 bloggers from the USA that speak on the subject of word of mouth, viral, buzz, influence and the engaging brand against the top 36 international bloggers that muse on the same subject?

Unlike some of the social media- and tech dedicated marketing and media bloggers, these broad-minded bloggers and company heads (below) have distinguished themselves by helping visitors understand how ideas spread, online and offline, through a range of different strategies and tactics and each recognizes the importance of having brands getting noticed, talked about and advocated in a 2.0 world.

In my opinion, they are much closer to explaining the purpose and benefits of a range of new media, web 2.0, co-creation, social networks and other web, cultural and social phenomenon.

For my social media appetite, they are also among the best at understanding the art and science of buzz, not getting too hung up on the Silicon Valley gossip, the backslapping self-promotion (with the race exception), the technology minutiae, the journalistic ethic or political meaning behind peer-generated ideas, content and advocacy.

To my knowledge, no one has yet built the all star list of word of mouth savvy blogs - too often our best are muddled with overarching marketing categories (The Power 150) or not fully descriptive, catch-all  social media lists. 

So here is my list, I've visited and read them all - my apologies to some of the non-english speaking International squad (there are limits to my comprehension even with pictures) and to some inevitable oversights.

Acknowledging my blind spots,  I've left 6 spots open for your own submissions on the U.S. and international side. Submit your thoughts on who publishes most credibly on the topics of influence, word of mouth, persuasion, participation, community, buzz, experiential and viral topics.

Perhaps we should have a favourite post tournament?  Any volunteers as Captains for the U.S. Side?

  The USA Team

1. Jackie Huba/Ben McConnell - Church of the Customer (Austin, Texas)

2. Andy Sernovitz - Damn! I Wish I Thought of That! (Chicago, Illinois)

3. Pete Blackshaw - CGM (Cincinnati, Ohio)

4. Jim Nail - Influence 2.0 (Boston, Massachusetts)

5. Idil Cakim - dot WOM (New York, New York)

6. Jeremiah Owyang - Web Strategist (San Francisco, Calfornia)

7. Rohit Bhargava - Influential Marketing (Washington, D.C.)

8. Owen Mack - CoBrandIt (Boston, Massechussetts)

9. Walter Karl - WOM Study  (Boston, Massachusetts)

10. Fred Reichheld - Net Promoter - (Boston, Massachusetts)

11. Max Kalehoff - Attention Max (New York, New York)

12. Olivier Blanchard - The Brand Builder (Greenville, South Carolina)

13. Charlene Li - Charlene Li (San Francisco, California)

14. Sam Decker - Bazaar Blog and Decker Marketing (Austin, Texas)

15. Joseph Jaffe - Jaffe Juice (New York, New York)

16. John Moore - Brand Autopsy (Austin, Texas)

17. Peter Kim - Being Peter Kim (Austin, Texas)

18. Mack Collier - The Viral Garden (Florence, Alabama)

19. Spike Jones - Brains on Fire (Greenville, South Carolina)

20. Ron McDaniel - Buzzoodle (Cleveland, Ohio)

21.John Jantsch - Duct Tape Marketing (Kansas City, Missouri)

22. Kim Proctor - How to Create Powerful Customer Experiences (Los Angeles, California)

23. Rob Walker - Murketing (Savannah, Georgia)

24. Lois Kelly - Foghound (Providence, Rhode Island)

25. Ann Handley - MarketingProfs (Boston, Massachusetts)

26. Shiv Singh - Going Social Now (New York, New York)

27. Laurent Flores - Customer Listening Blog (New York, New York)

28. Tom Asacker - A Clear Eye (Manchester, New Hampshire)

29. Francois Gossieaux - Emergence Marketing (Boston, Massachusetts)

30. Geoff Livingston - The Buzz Bin (Washington, B.C.)

31. Dave Balter - BzzAgent (Boston, Massachussetts)

32. John Bell - Digital Influence Mapping Project (Washington, D.C.)

33. Todd Tweedy - Word Spreads Quickly (Charlottesville, Virginia)

34. Marta Kagan - the Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius (Boston, Massachusetts)

35. Greg Stielstra - Pyromarketing (Nashville, Tennessee)

36. Willow Baum Lundgren - Small Planet (Kansas City, Missouri)

37. Amber Naslund - The Brand Box (Chicago, Illinois)

38. Greg Verdino - GregVerdino.com (New York, New York)

39. Paul Chaney - Conversational Media Marketing (Lafayette, Louisiana)

40. August Ray - Experience - The Blog (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

41-42??? Your Turn

The International Team

1. Frederick Herrman - Netszkobold (Germany)

2. Emmanuel Vivier - Culture-Buzz (Luxembourg)

3. Sean Moffitt - Buzz Canuck  (Canada)

4. Rachel Clarke - Behind the Buzz (England)

5. Gavin Heaton - Servant of Chaos (Australia)

6. Sam Flemming - SeeISee.com (China)

7. Ian McKee - The Power of Influence (Singapore) 

8. Mirko Pollera/Alex Giordano -  Ninja Marketing (Italy)

9. Russell Davies - Russell Davies (England)

10. Simon McDermott - Attentio (Belgium)

11. Andy Lark - Andy Lark  (New Zealand)

12. Max Lenderman - Experience the Message (Canada)

13. Paul Marsden - Viral Culture (England)

14. Laurent Valembert -  Marketing Alternatif (France)

15. Mike Rowe - 1000 heads (UK)

16. Par Thunstrom - Buzzador (Sweden)

17. CLeber Martins - Blog de Guerrilha (Brazil)

18  Willem Sodderland - Buzzer (Netherlands)

19. Jean Nasr - Alt-Buzz (France)

20. Igor Beuker - Viral Tracker (Netherlands)

21. Grant McCracken - This Blog Sits At...(Canada)

22. Mitch Joel - Six Pixels of Separation (Canada)

23. Justin Kirby - DMC (U.K.)

24. Sebastian Provencher - Praized  (Canada)

25. Alan Moore/Tomi Ahonen - Communities Dominate Brands (England/Hong Kong)

26. Anna Farmery - The Engaging Brand (UK)

27. Neil Perkin - Only Dead Fish (UK)

28. Johnnie Moore - Johnny Moore's Werblog (UK)

29. Joanna Kocieba - BuzzReporter (Poland)

30. Hjortur Smarason - Marketing Safari (Iceland)

31. Krishna De - Biz Growth News (Ireland)

32. Fred Cavazza - FredCavazza.net (France)

33. Bart van Der Aa - Icemedia (Netherlands)

34. Gianluca Artesano - Frozen Frogs (Italy)

35. Ivo Laurin - Outbreak (Czech) 

36. Chris Abraham - Chris Abraham (Germany)

37. Mark Earls - Herd (U.K.)

38. David Eicher - Brainwash (Germany)

39. Pepe Wietholz - Buzz People(Germany)

40 Christian Wilfer/Carolina Schulz -  Viralmarketing.de (Germany)

41. Dean Hunt - DeanHunt.com - (UK)

41-42??? Your Turn

Spread the word, the Game is afoot!

Addendum - also if you could, take the following Agent Wildfire Buzz Report survey about word of mouth behaviors and practices in return for a chance for your favourite 12 business books.

Welcome 2009 - The ABCs of the New Marketing, Media and Research Universe

I gave a presentation to a consultancy the other day and they had a particular interest in my musings on the subject of "what's next".

With 2009 around the corner, I thought I'd get a jumpstart on the New Year's eve pundits and postulate what fromative changes are happening that will profoundly affect the way we do business.

Although the list of 26 below doesn't validate the lively and enagaging discussion, here is our take on the 26 alphabetized marketing, media, digital, culture and research trends driving our industry for your consumption (with due credit to Dr. Seuss):

Attention overload – sophisticated filtering

Brand community-building – private networks of fans, influencers & evangelists

Customer experience focus – marketing is what we do

Democratized advertising – you determine and grade your ads

Free agent agency/enterprise – hire the best freelancers

Generation Y impacts – the Net generation grows up

Humanization of the Brand – more blogs, more connections, better stories

Influencers – harnessing the 1% rule

Joint Ventures – accelerated cooperation between companies

Karma Capitalism – links to cause marketing

Local – marketing is local

Mobile Marketing/Media – the new search is mobile

Networking integration – one stop socializing

Online spending  - catches up with how we surf, blends with TV

Psychographic targeting/profiling – away from demography

Quasi-profile – a networking profile for personal, social and professional life

Reputation management – personal and corporate indices

Semantic web – everything piece of tech is smart and talking to each other

Transparency/authenticity – search for genuine stuff

Uber Connectedness – 24 hours on

Visual – sea change - camera phones, file saving technology and editing

Word of Mouth – the #1 influence continues to grow

XX – Women Rule

You Do It – Marketing/Selling for the masses

Zopa – Peer to peer lending, elimination of transaction fees and threats to established -opolies

Obama's Speech in Summary

Even for a non-partisan like myself, Barrack Obama has been able to cast my jadedness about politics aside and make me believe that someone can win without the stoic blue suit, old white man pedigree and do it in a way that brings cynical people like me closer to believing that it can be done with honor.

Even if your right of centre or a Republican, do yourself a favour and watch his acceptance speech.

Similar to King, Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton, Obama has oratory powers we have not seen for sometime around the Oval Office. As David Bergen mentioned about his speech "it was more like a symphony not a speech"

Here is the text version, the video version and the wordle version pictured above.   

Tom Fishburne - A Method to His Madness

After reading a post about Tom Fishburne, director of marketing for Method, illustrator of lampooning cartoons and now author of This One Time at Brand Camp, I rejoiced in finding a client peer who believes the same things I do and is not only is willing to state things as they are but also has the talent  to eviscerate some truly dysfunctional corporate practices in cartoons.

Notwithstanding the fact that Tom shares a similar history to myself - working at a large corporation (my P&G to his General Mills), leading marketing efforts on household products (my brand management of Tide and his on Method) and venturing out and doing something about the chaos (my launch of Agent Wildfire and his cartoon blog TomFishburne.com), he just makes so much sense for people like me, who have worked in corporate marketing organizations.

From the perils of brand management to a fear of standing out in companies, the insanity of mass marketing to the absence of remarkable thinking, the need for transparency and the power of storytelling,   Tom provides a tonic for what ails big company marketing and the smaller companies who repeat their mistakes.

Read the full post at Church of the Customer but I connected with the first two answers in particular:

Q: What's the biggest challenge in being a brand manager today? Remarkable thinking. Then shepherding that thinking through the organizational gates.  Too often the edges of a great idea get sanded, eventually launching as a pale shadow of the original idea.

I love this quote from Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad: "Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking." 

Q: What's the biggest trap most brand managers stupidly fall into? The mass market trap. Chasing market size. Trying to appeal to everyone and avoiding alienating anyone. By trying to appeal to everyone, no one gets excited.

In my past brand lives, we joked that our target was "a woman, age 25–39, with a pulse."  Instead, if you cater to a passionate and vocal niche, you become more meaningful. Consumer loyalty follows. Niche marketing isn't just for small brands.  General Mills does a great job of training marketers to find and truly understand your niche's brand champions. You create your products and marketing just for them.  When you do, much of the mass market will follow, too.