Buzz Canuck

My 11 Takeaways from Social Media Nite at JWT #SoMeNite - A Kitchen Table Chat of Peers

I had the privilege of joining an illustrious group of some of Toronto's best digital folk last night for a "kitchen table"/salon chat on what makes social media tick in Canada (#SoMeNite if following on Twitter) .

Big kudos to Laurie Dillon-Schalk @ldillonschalk and Melanie Reiffenstein @MelanieReiff of JWT @JWTCanada for ringleading such an intelligent and diverse group and an equal thumbs up to Rick Wolfe @rickwolfe of Poststone for moderating the serendipitous discussion so effectively.

Very tough to corral an audience that included:  1 media planner, 1 anthropologist, 1 analytics guru, 1 print agency, 1 software dudes, 2 media boutiques, 1 social media producer, 1 creative, 1 PR flack, 2 big agency gurus, 2 entrepreneurs, 2 strat planners and 1 HR consultant. Not only did the diversity improve the discussion but also underscored how difficult it is for a client to assuage all these competing social interests. In fact, the melting pot (or is that a Canadian mosaic) motivated me enough to kick my personal blog out of it's slumber and provide a summary of the discourse.

Beyond a smart roadmap for social media implementation in the enterprise (the key 6 steps below) here are my 11 takeaways from the discussion:

1) Bridging Chasms is Needed - we don't need as many visionaries in the business of social anymore. As David Jones @doctorjones of Proximity WW mused - CMOs pretty much appreciate by now the impact of social for their business -it's no longer "the why", it's more "the how" and "the what" that are the stumbling blocks.

And as Sara Chi @infosara indicated the biggest social hurdle and what we really need are "crusaders" that can bridge the distances between customer and companies, experts and the mainstream, the grassroots and the top ranks. Donna Papacosta @donnapapacosta mentioned one of her most effective meetings was having a simple "lifting of the veil" discussion with a CEO to educate and subsequently push social initiatives forward.

2) Social Media as a Discipline and Behaviour vs. a Tool/Tactic - David Jones @doctorjones and David Bradfield @dbradfield of Sapient Nitro emphasized too much effort is spent on how social media can be bought, traded and commerced vs. treating it as a core practice in companies that's inescapable to avoid in a connected economy. Hessie Jones @hessiejones of Due North mentioned the difficulty to accept this paradigm within the media planning and buying industry who have historically viewed media as transactional.

3) The Experts are the Cobbler's Children - the intellectual horsepower in the room was genuinely digital MENSA-level. They get it, and I'm sure could do great work for all their clients if given the full chance to roam. But as Jill Fagan @jillpfagan  mentioned, as an industry we are horrible internal communicators and sellers. Bigger effort and thinking needs to be made on how to get clients to "yes" , appreciate the value of what social brings overall to their business and establishing some paradigm on who gets to work on what as agencies, startups, software companies and consultants stumble over each other fighting for digital nickels. Wise cautions by @johnsaydam - this is not free and @ldillonschalk - don't pitch until they are ready.

4) Tension between Emotion/Creative and Analytics - the credibility to push social media forward exists on two opposite poles - as John Saydam @johnsaydam mentioned through his RIM example - the best stuff in social resonates emotionally but as David Bradfield @dbradfield supported - the institutionalization of social media as a practice requires sound analytics. I guess the perfect mind for social media is an equally balanced left brain/right brain.

5) Is Social Media the new CRM or new Dot.com? - Rick Wolfe @rickwolfe and John Reeves of Kyp interjected their years of experience and wisdom by pointing to the slow and steady progression and eventual maturation of the CRM industry from the '90s frontier mentality to the now well-established multi-billion dollar collossus. I'm of two minds here -

On the yes side " it does have CRM-esque similarities" -

    - the progression of technology has been swift

    - it's moving toward essentialness

    - a small group of experts exists within a slower-to-adopt mainstream marketplace

    - a lot of bad money is being spent in its early heydays

    - each has and/or will go through Gartner's Hype Cycle

    -the glossary and behaviour is difficult to understand for the traditional world (sometimes     intentionally so) and

    - it's potential to build business value and operationalize business processes is huge.

On the no side "this social thing is a much different beast than we've seen before" -

    - the pace of change is so swift here and continues to progress that as Jill Rosenberg     @girlfrommars mentioned "current digital will always be this fast moving, somewhat awkward,     teenager" and that a full social eveolution here may only be 5-10 years here before we move     onto the next big thing (most guesses were mobile) 

    - norms are more difficult to establish in order to standardize industry given multiple players,         mutiple technology interests and swifter-moving environment

    - the power of socializing business has much more far reaching implications than the CRMing of     business and

    - whereas previously web building and CRM programs could be compartmentalized, social     business is a cultural corporate, operational and  branding concern.

    So which side of this fence are you on?

6) Don't Overreach and Be Too Eager - as evidenced by Nicole McKinney @bcadgroup and David Bradfield's @dbradfield examples - a comfort zone needs to be established with a client before they are willing to fry bigger fish. Most digital people are quick decison makers and early adopters by instinct, they have less regard for the "large cruise ship" ecosystem that exists within a corporation to get them to take even a few degrees of turn in the right direction.

7) Listening and Being Aware is the First Step - I'm not too sure if social media adoption is a 6-step program (as proposed below) or a 12 step one akin to Alcoholics Anonymous but there is general agreement that one of the best things agencies can do for their clients is make them aware of what's happening in the digital world at large and their immediate industry. Perhaps not the best reason to move, but I think there was some consensus (with a notable exception by @sarasepehri)that competitive steps forward also lead to reappraisal and steps forward on the client front.

8) What of Canada? - David Jones @doctorjones made a great point of the lack of dynamic Canadian client personalities that are lightning rods and role models for their peers. Whereas Scott Monty (Ford), @scottmonty , Lionel Mencacha (Dell) @lionelatdell and Shiv Singh (Pepsi) @shivsingh are passionate flagbearers for US corporate adoption and senior-level understanding of social media, who speaks for Canada?

9) The Lag Effect in Canada - there was some noise about Canada's reticence to use digital and social media. There are two key distinctions here. On a user/cosnumer front, Canada is the #1 user of technology and digital media in the world (for proof here is one of my recent Wikibrands' posts "Canada Rules the Roost When It Comes to Digital"). Perhaps we use the web more as a life appliance then the sexy accessory in our wardrobe, but average Canadians have flocked to digital based on high education levels, technology appetite, high urbanization and quite frankly winter (what else you going to do when it's -30 in Winnipeg?). What is the bigger travesty and almost a crime is the risk aversion, branch plant mentality that local corporations have employed who happily operate 2-3 years behind their customers (sins put forward - lack of executive awareness of even the simple stuff, only 17% of Canadian companies measuring and non-mobile friendly sites) ?

Maybe it's Rick Wolfe's humble Canadian-ness that stops us from promoting our successes in bright lights. A great idea for a future Social Media Nite is how the industry pushes the credibility and acceleration of its efforts as a whole forward  (e.g. government leadership, petition, comprehensive training, CEOs for Social Club, putting teeth into a NxNe summit, inviting top 10 most popular twitterers to a TedXNorthTweets?).

10) Simple, Simple, Simple - as Melanie Reiffenstein @melaniereiff , Daniel Berkal @danielberkal of Palmerston Group and Noel Geer of Ngage Media emphasized - the best stuff that comes out of the web is basic, with very few moving parts and a core central focus. Data junkies, consultants, planners and pitch people need to stop debating the nuances, creating unnecessary noise and the feeling amongst their less tech-adept stakeholders that somehow they are the disgrace of the industry by not wading into the deep thickets of digital game. Let's agree on the fundamentals (don't worry - yes, you can charge for the additional features) and start embracing the needs that really count - the customer (as Laurie Dillon-Schalk @ldillonschalk so eloquently reiterated).

11) If It Wasn't Tough, Everybody Would be Doing It - when you get together with any digital posse, it's tempting to have a gripe session and we had a bit of that last night. And that's okay. It's tribal and creates a social bond between people with like experiences and a "we vs. them" zeal to change the world. But staying crabby is a dead end street. To end on a positive outtake from discussion, I'll lean on Jill Fagan's soliloquy - this is an incredible time to be a buisness person, change agent and digital expert. The shifts in business value, methods of operation and opportunities for innovation are larger than they've ever been. And as people who live and breathe this work, we are most poised to benefit disproportionately from this evolution to digitizing business, socializing culture and changing the way people live, work and play. So chill out, enjoy the ride and remember every time an executive utters "what's Twitter?" that's secretly an extra premium in your pocket.

Without giving any secrets away - the 6 steps to Social Media Maturity put forward:

Step 1 - Look & Listen

Step 2- Establish a Social Footprint

Step 3 - Engage

Step 4 - Increase Your Social Currency

Step 5 - Build Your Community

Step 6 - Aim for Social Sophistication

And the Three Star tweets of the night,

le troisieme etoile/the third star - @dbradfield  "For true success in social, companies need to move away from control models to release models"...

le deuxieme etoile/the second star - @doctorjones "My sister from another mother @hessiejones is depressing me" - I have no idea what this means but interesting

le premiere etoile/the first star - @dbradfield (what can I say he had his iPad open all night) "When social becomes a discipline, it's shared across an organization and not the domain of an individual"

Thanks again to the folks at JWT Canada, Laurie Dillon-Schalk, Rick Wolfe, Melanie Reiffenstein, Hessie Jones, Dainel Berkal, Noel Geer, 'Sarah Sephera, Jill Rosenberg, John Saydam, Sarah Chi, Bruce Runyan, John Reeves, Jill Fagan, Nicole Mckinney, David Bradfield, Donna Pappacosta, David Jones for the discussion. I look forward to the sequel .

Sean Moffitt @seanmoffitt

The Social Networking Traffic Poll - Top 11 A-Has

The most interesting results:

1) My Space traffic down year over year - yes down - Rupert Murdoch worries about web strategy somewhere (remember Friendster's law of social networking - traffic rolling downhill tends to accelerate)

2) My Yearbook.com takes off where a less friendly Facebook and less inviting MySpace leaves a vacuum

3) bebo unsuccessfully tries to unseat the  dominant two in North America

4) The mainstream professional world starts waking up to LinkedIn and LinkedIn starts waking up to social networking tools and tactics

5) Fubar - like the movie, apparently you'll love the online happy hour bar - this one was a surprise to me

6) Ning - is growing but needs some help getting return visitors to its microcommunity network - seems like a smart company will just offer white label services of what Ning already does. Yuku getting in on this game too.

7) Classmates.com - yawn, when is this thing going to be replaced by something else - 755 members from my high school, 27 from my graduating year - mostly useless info (you're a fool if you pay for this) ...have a feeling this site is built on the stilts of prom night and how everybody will stay in touch with each other and never do

8) Twitter nation is a small but high frequency horde, breaks into the charts this year but will it ever go mainstream - I have my doubts unless it can explaining its value better

9) Cafe Mom - watch out for this one - the key to the world's most important conversations and the door to 80% of our household's purchases...

10) Black Planet - torn on this one - great so many African Americans can find their home here within social networks, bad that it might not be so popular if the racial divide playing out on the 2008 election stage wasn't so wide. Is this playing out in Asian online neighbourhoods too?

11) Orkut - at over 15 visits a month and growing at 70% - a high frequency hardcore still remains on Google's social networking answer - don't have a clue why - people with South American friends?

Top 11 Traits of a Community Manager

Lifted from Best Engaging Communities, a shockingly good site on community building (shocking because I hadn't dropped by it before), the eleven traits of an increasingly popular role of community manager:

#1 - Knowledgeable about the community's domain
#2 - Well connected to a range of community members
#3 - Recognized by peers as competent in a broad range of community subjects
#4 - Widely known and respected for his/her ability to facilitate a group of key contributors
#5 - Maintains the group's focus on establishing areas of common interest and priorities
#6 - Puts the community as a priority over the company
#7 - Is an educator and teaches the community about the company and its products, often in a non-invasive manner
#8 - Uses the tools and communication style of the community
#9 - Puts a human face on the company, both online and at events
#10 - Connects the right people in the company with the right customers and knows when to get out of the way
#11 - Pushes through barriers at the corporate level

So a big question for many firms, if your going to hire an internal cnadidate to perform this job, from which function will they most likely come (the answer is most likely telling on how you run your business).

Buzz Canuck's 11 Lessons Learned From 2006

Ben Yoskovitz at The Instigator blog has an interesting campaign for lessons learned in 2006 with an altruistic bent ... here's my best from this last year, Ben thanks for the $5 donated to charity, hopefully this list of 11 has earned it.

#1 - Great ideas always bubble to the top - if you work hard enough, with enough passion and perseverance (and a good dose of listening), a great idea will triumph.

#2 - Marketing changes never happen in revolution - radio didn't radically change the way we market in the 20s, TV didn't in the 50s, the web didn't change it in the 90s and social media and word of mouth will take time to grow in this decade - why? in every changing world, there is the establishment and the movement and it is rarely a one-sided win

#3 - Competence in the new marketing world has few credentials - some of the best blogs on subjects I'm interested in are written by 22 year old students and enthusiastic young professionals - the takeaway for the more experienced - without continued reinvestment in learning and participating, you and your old ideas can get left behind quickly -  a span of two years is an eternity in this economy

#4 - Bloggers can be angry - even with the best intentions in approaching the blogosphere, a spirit of contrarianism runs through bloggers - sometimes it's a real positive in promoting change, expressing dissatisfaction with things that are unfair or exposing bad and negligent practice, sometimes it's just plain ego, envy or politics at play - caveat emptor

#5  -  Word of mouth has never been more important - in full disclosure, as a WOM specialist, I should feel this way - but the facts are on my side  - never before has the media world and marketplace been more cluttered with a more overwhelmed consumer -  word of mouth from friends and family has risen in importance in the real world and thankfully, this year in the lense of marketers and mainstream media (see the headlines)

#6 - Community is not a list or an event - every communications agency I know is laying some kind of claim to word of mouth or community building - there is a built in arrogance that if you're great in X it should easily translate to Y  - in this peer-to=-peer game, might does not make right - some of the best examples from this year are entrepreneurs working out of garages producing inspired peer-to-peer buzz because they are passionate about what they do, know their consumer well and live and die by the results (Stormhoek wines)    

#7 - The Web is a Friendly Place - beyond the reputation that the web has had for lurkers, fraudists and scheisters - in 2006, I have connected with a fascinating group of people that i would never have come in contact without participating in the conversation through this blog, my company and other social networks

#8 - You Can't be an Expert in Everything - although confident in my own skills, there really is just not enough time in the day nor interest in the heart to be a top tier performer in everything you do, this year I learned partnering with specialists can have big advantages, the dividends will reveal themselves in 2007

#9 - Work/Life balance is not just a motto - in 2007 is the year I need to do a much better job at this and lay down some ground rules for ensuring a business that has become a cause doesn't turn into a "life noose"

#10 - Shorter and more two-way blogging - candidly, I participate in blogging for different reasons -  I don't need reams of eyeballs (although I do enjoy them) and I don't need to spread link love  to the world (although I do like to profile people who have great insights), what I try and do is provide some thought leadership and profile for things and ideas I care about. However,  this year I should blend in more and become more of a "best practices" blogger by: 1) keeping my posts shorter, 2) becoming more a gatekeeper for conversation, 3) ensuring I always reciprocate comments, 4)scanning the universe of my blogroll more regularly and 5) adding an audio or video element

#11 - Doing something today and failing is better than envisioning something for tomorrow that doesn't get done - perfectionism only exists in religion and perhaps science,   the key to this economy is moving fast, keeping momentum and addressing and learning from failure quickly when it happens.. as Emerson wrote "the reward of a thing well done is to have done it"

To all my readers, have a great party tonight and an enjoyable and productive 2007! Spread the word...now take it away Kool & The Gang..

Attention Canadian Media: Sounds Like We Have A Story Here! The Top 11 "New Marketing World" Magazine Covers

The Top 11 Word of Mouth Stories of 2006

2006 was a huge year for word of mouth and all its related cousins - social media, experiential marketing, web 2.0, influencer marketing and virtual, online and real communities. 

Not only are the marketers taking notice but other potentates are rallying around the peer-to-peer grapevines. Investors are lining up, old school media are keenly observing the shift and government is becoming curiously interested  in their stake in the game.

With no further fanfare then, here are my picks for the top 11 word of mouth headlines and stories of 2006.

#1 - Google gobbles up YouTube - for $1.65 billion, YouTube graduates to the big leagues and the lense of future media, overnight making YouTube a household name to the masses and by itself, catapulting video-sharing to the heart of future social networking

#2 - Liar, Liars, Blogs on Fire - I hate to bring this up again, as Edelman has likely experienced enough pain on this, but if marketers and communications believe lying is fair game in today's marketplace, this mushroom cloud involving Edelman and Walmart  paying columnists to act as bloggers is fair warning. When you have your next internal team meeting, and somebody offers the idea of not disclosing honestly - run for the hills. Same message goes out regrettably to Sony and countless others this year too (nodding my head in astonishment).

#3 - Time calls "You"  The Person of the Year - although dismissed in some circles, it says something when an old school magazine votes for the connected and wired individual person as the most interesting entity of the year. Traditional marketing flagbearers and laggards convert, the barbarians are at the gate.

#4 - Snakes on a Plane Rollercoaster - the poster boy for user-generated marketing blows up at the box office, barely reaching the totals another poor snake movie "Anaconda" achieved over a decade ago. The learnings - buzz can't survive a bad product, word of mouth must create reasonable expectations, mainstream success is not guaranteed until your influencers spread offline and online referral and even the coolest guy in Hollywood Samuel Jackson can't carry a bad flick by himself.

#5 - Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" - not since the Honda Cog have we seen such a brilliantly devised viral campaign for a mass produced category product. This idea tipped not because of the gag, the joke, the sexy shot, the  Jackass stunt....it succeeded because it was a great brand idea, brilliantly executed and  heartfelt and endorsed by its target. The fact that there was some legitimacy behind the creative through charity support and an important societal message makes this "Hall of fame" word of mouth stuff.  Don't know who to give kudos here as success has many fathers but I do believe Canadians had a big role in the anti-supermodel approach to marketing.  Creative directors be warned  - well told and real brand stories that have online as a central pivot work better then your jazzy, mass produced TV ads with no core idea.

#6  Amanda Congdon Bails or Gets Tossed - the messy breakup in July at Rocketboom leaves hundreds of thousands without their modern day Walter Kronkite to deliver the news. Online history tells us celebrity can be a mercurial thing - from 700 watchers in 2004, to 300,000 in 2006 to short term obscurity and now a gig as new media reporter for ABC...that's a lot of change for two years.

#7 Rory Fitzpatrick an All Star Defencemen - professional hockey has bowed to the "power of the few" and the force behind social media. Based on a mock campaign waged by a Buffalo-based blogger to get a journeyman defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick from the Vancouver Canucks as a write-in nominee for the All-Star game. The stats at the time of this writing: 21 games, 0 points, 428,832 votes, 2nd place for All-Star defencemen balloting.  Even his coach and goalie have gone online and voted multiple times for him. Given NHL sagging popularity, my hope is they live by the rules and let the people decide and allow Rory Fitzpatrick to play.

#8 All-Star Word of Mouth Firms - a trend in the agency business, whether independent or agency network, to get the celebrity veterans together in a thinktank as a boutique new media agency firms - Publicis created their hive with Denuo, Steve Rubel joined Edelman's me2revolution (perhaps a few months too early - see #2) and the all-star social media consultants launched Crayon and perhaps dubiously became the first company to launch in Second Life (didn't Al Gore invent the internet too?). See my post on the Canuck version to this approach called inukshuk.

#9 Canadian believers percolating - it may be my location in Toronto or perhaps my bias in thinking that Canucks are broad thinking, cosmopolitan and ahead-of-the-pack global citizens, but there is a buzz of activity about word of mouth in Canada. In cities across the country, there are meetups, conferences and gatherings enthusiastically collaborating on the subject - Third Tuesday, Word Up, Throng, Geek Dinner, Case Camp, Mesh, Canadian Institute of New Media and the revival of AIMS  have all left their imprint on people. See here for my post on the top 50 Canadian Bloggers - the top 100 edition to follow in January 2007 and more good news to follow the rest of the year. We're at the start of something good!

#10 FTC Word of Mouth Guidelines - if we can't regulate ourselves then the FTC is more than happy to enact some rules in the U.S.. Announced in November, the simple rule being if you are going to accelerate word of mouth through the use of influencers, agents or a panel of regular people, you better disclose and if you don't the government will keep you honest. As a practitioner of word of mouth, all I can is "about time" - shill, astroturfing and roach bait marketers should go back to the caves where they came from and help the people in the "white hats"  legitimize word of mouth as a healthy standalone channel.

#11 Second Life - New Age Media or Fancy of 2006 - with over 1,000,000 registered users, Second Life can hardly be dismissed as a niche media with no hope of a revenue model anymore.  It will be telling  over the next 18 months to know whether it can break out past its base.  At this point, there's enough evidence to argue both sides.

My consolation headlines (add your contributions and I'll continue to add them below):
- WOMMA increases its base of members to over 330
- Lonely Girl, we hardly knew you
- Garth Turner gets Dooced
- Keller Fay announces Influencers have 184 word of mouth conversations every week
- Bit Torrent - the future of TV
- My Space - the number one visited website in the world (at least in page views)
- Facebook - from nowhere to the second biggest social network
- GM fights back with social media arsenal against Thomas Friedman  and the New York Times      
- BzzAgent raises over $15 million in VC
- China and Internet Censorship
- Pay Per Post - Blight or New Media Model
- Give Meaning - Open Source to Charity
- Five Things Meme Spread lIke Wildfire
- Technorati Reports 55 million blogs, Some of Them Good - 2 new ones created each second and 18 posts created each second
- Gartner Estimates 100 million blogs as the height of blogging in 2007, 200 million ex-bloggers cluttering up media space
- oh yeah and selfishly, The Influencers launches in Canada 
- O'Reilly tries to patent Web 2.0 Trademark - Please, How Old old Are We!
- Engagdget, Gizmodo, Boing Boing, TechCrunch and The Huffington Post  are Most Popular Blogs
- Microsoft 2007 Launches
- Apple Rolls Out iTunes Movies
- GM and the Chevy Tahoe UGM Experience
- Million Dollar Home Page
- New Brunswick Blogger Jailed
- Nike builds legions of soccer fans with Joga      
- Banks yes, I said Banks launch podcasts - Van City and Scotiabank - Kudos.
- Canadian Bloggers take a Seat at the Adult  Media Table
- Stromhoek Wines Harnesses Blogger Outreach
- Majority of Top 17 marketers in Canada use Word of Mouth as a Tool
- Daily Dose of Imagery still rocks,  book of photos sell like hot cakes
- Macleans publishes "Does The internet Suck" - barb-tossing and debate continue
- Paris Hilton and Britney extend their 15 minutes through online fame

What were Your headlines for 2006?

The Top Eleven Tips for Managing a Good Blog

Some nice advice on a blog posting from Vincent Maher nicely pre-packaged as a Top Eleven about Writing better blogs (as frequent readers have now probably now realized 11 and 22 are my favorite long list numbers).

Of course, some of these rules are flagrantly abused on this my  site Buzz Canuck. I read some of them and I realized "damn, he's right -  I do way too little of that" like #1  - a blog entry is a stub for conversation  (my posts sometimes far too long) and #11 - be active in your own conversations (although i read all my comments sometimes I'm too busy to respond back).

The differential between journalism and blogging is an interesting one - are you simply a community manager or a writer and fountain of insight or some amalgam of the two?

Top Eleven Dream Word of Mouth Campaigns

I often wake up in cold sweats at night dreaming about building an online community or word of mouth campaigns for various saliva-inducing, set-up-for-success and amazingly buzzable clients.

Being a new  media and a challenge to old perceptions, requires a lengthy sales cycle but no matter, over the next year or so, I would loved to be faced with the prospect of working on an awrad-winning campaign for the following brands (or types of brands):

1) Beer - having worked for three beer companies, you realize this is my blood. Three types I would love to work on and know WOM would be exceptionally responsive too: a premium brand (like Guinness, Stella or Grolsch) that have real stories to tell with real provenance and a differentiated product/package, a counterculture, independent  brand (like Steam Whistle, Boris or Big Rock) or an obscure retro,  brand of the underdog - Pabst Blue Ribbon or a Labatt 50 in English Canada would be  the sweetspot.

2) Tech - take your pick but haven seen the RIM guys just win CEOs of the year, to create a Blackberry community would have so many different flanges and benefits, it makes me schoolboy giddy with excitement.

3) Fashion and Style - lululemon is the wonder girl of word of mouth , I feel personally vested by telling my wife to  try them and advocate them right when they were just getting a toehold in the  Toronto market - if it makes you feel good and look good then it will make you buzz good.

4) Cars - not just any "it could be a Taurus or Sable me too" brand, working on a car that considers itself a tribe would be a coup - Prius for the greens, Jeep for the mudders, MIni for the show-and -tellers, BMW, Audi or Mercedes for the hiugh flyers or a number of other hungry underdog brands with different automotive cult enthusiasts would be special and bankable as a marketing activity.

5) Retail - what I would give to do a campaign for Mountain Equipment Coop - great values, great fandom, wonderful product and great retail experience and extended experience -- please call me, will work for product.  Holt Renfrew, Lush and Sony Store would be three other prime candidates

6) Books - for a certain audience, books are the escape from the everyday that you just have to share with others -- a literal word of mouth buzz generation factory could be built for a forward-thinking book company.

7) Games - whether they are board based or console-based, there is an underlying instinctive reason why these industries have sucked billions of dollars and oodles of time from all stripes of life - we're obsessed with "play" - within even the straightest living person exists a MMORPG or trivia buff waiting to get out.

8) Beauty Care  -  brands in this space are selling magic in a bottle , believe me when I was a  young punk of a Brand Manager on Noxzema and Clearasil - the product was more than just the brand I worked on ---  when you find a great one like some great mass products - (see L'Oreal and Dove word of mouth success) or great niche products (Body Shop and Kiehls are faves) you will evangelize from the tallest soapbox.

9) Non-Profits - an inherent word of mouth advantage - most causes and charities already have a built up following - you look at the Brest Cancer Walk for the Cure, Pink Ribbon or Team in Training and you'll uncover some of the fiercest loyal flagbearers for any brand that's been invented.

10)  Food - if we put it on our body, we likely  have something to say about it and based on fact that everybody has to eat everyday - word of mouth can even make broccoli sing.

11) Banks - this may appear like "one of these things is not like the other" - I would love to incubate a word of mouth culture and program in one of the most traditional and corporate forms of busienss as a litmus test to prove that if it could work and thrive here, it could work anywhere.

Of course, with a profit-seeking motive...if your reading this and are in another industry, your business is happily invited here.

Top 11, I Mean 20, Canadian Word of Mouth Blogs

I received a lot of curiosity and interest from my Top 11 Word of Mouth Blogs post and there were a number of people that mentioned I should have authored a Canadian version to the list.

Interesting challenge! Canucks are a little behind some other parts of the world in our adoption of word of mouth practices, there simply exists less experts on the subject here. So I've expanded the tent a bit to include a number of people that might not even consider themselves "word of mouth" pundits or experts but write about things that touch up against the subject.

Having read through about 120 blogs this weekend that might have made the list, here are the top 20 Canadian word of mouth blogs. We broke from our top 11 tradition to be an inclusive populist blog and identify a larger set of 20 WOM missionaries north of 49 degrees. I hope this list expands next time we do it....we need more believers.

My criteria was somewhat objective and subjective

- the objective - do they update frequently?, do they have a few months of blogging history? are they Canadian or live in Canada?, is it readable? and do they mention word of mouth, buzz, brand experience, social media, viral or related subjects?

- the subjective: do I like reading them?, are they trying to do something different?, are they helping educate Canadians?, do they sound informed? and do I sense they're doing it out of passion vs. doing it because it was a job?

In full disclosure, I have worked with David Jones, he was my PR flack (and a very good one at that) when I was in charge of marketing for Molson Canadian (and Joe Thornley was the managing partner at the PR agency). The others are acquaintances, colleagues, strangers and some might even believe competitors to what I do outside of blogging.

The Top 20 List:

David Jones @ PR Works
Kate Trgovac @ My Name is Kate 
Colin Mckay @ CanuckFlack
Mitch Joel @ Twist Image
Michael Seaton @ The Client Side
Michael Ferguson @ Home is Where You Hang Your @
Leesa Barnes @ Podonomics
Ken Schafer & Company @ One Degree
Joe Thornley @ ProPR
Tamera Kremer @ 3i
Darren Barefoot
Susan Abbott @ Customer Experience Crossroads
Jordan Behan @ Tell Ten Friends
Susannah Gardner @ Buzz Marketing with Blogs
Stuart Macdonald
Matthew Ingram
Mark Evans

Canucks Emeritus – well-informed Canadians who've fled across the border

Malcolm Gladwell
Grant McCracken @ This Blog Sits At The…
Tara Hunt @ Horse, Pig, Cow

Of and of course myself, foolish oversight, damn that’s 21 now…

Sean Moffitt @ Buzz Canuck

 

Thanks for the inspiration Canucks, I hope to share pints/cafes/bottled Evians with you soon.  Others? Please let me know your out there and we'll add to the list.

The Top 11 Word of Mouth Blogs

I just finished profiling a number of great marketing blogs, but given my speciallized interest,  I wanted to profile the top eleven that I thought best covered off the niched-out area of word of mouth. Kudos on the content of the sites provided...they are an inspiration for people first exploring or going deep into the world of word of mouth:

Church of the Customer
Experience Curve
Creating Passionate Users
The Brand Builder Blog
Emergence Marketing
Marketing Monger
Seth Godin's Blog
Brand Autopsy
The Viral Garden
Walter Karl's Word of Mouth Communciation Study
Oh yeah, of course ourselves Buzz Canuck