CMA my WOM

I was given a free ticket to the CMA Word of Mouth conference today.  Thanks to the Moffitt'ster who is now going to kill me for my rant below.

My CMA Word of Mouth Rant

What gives when a word of mouth conference does not make wireless access ubiquitous and simple?  It's not like every speaker isn't talking about the power of the network to support or even drive word of mouth activity.  And it's not like we wouldn't want little sean to be able to spread the word while on-site.  So why no mention in the literature on how to get on-line???

I have to give some slack as we are talking about the CMA here.  But it's time to wake up!

On the positive side, I got to meet a few neat people as I wandered around hunting down the trail towards the secret WAP password.  In the end, I scored.  The access was pretty bad but it was there.  Okay.  On with the cool findings.

Word of Mouth in Canada

Some really interesting stuff is actually happening up here in Canada.  Who knew??

Nike

• Spoke about the global football (soccer) campaign
• Strong Nike point of view
• Engage your audience
• Involve your audience
• Respect your audience
• There will always be those who don't agree or find fault.  If you are not being authentic and involving your audience, then you deserve to be called out.

	Chevrolet (McLaren McCann) This one surprised me - letsgochevrolet.ca Integrated campaign Online:  create an avatar and use Text to speech technology to tell your story Avatars are amazingly configurable Results (in the first six weeks) 80,000 unique visitors 35,000+ avatars created Average time spent on website:  5minutes 46seconds 5% of chevrolet site activity attributed to viral area
	Monster.ca www.evalu8me.ca Brilliant.  Evaluate your style and value as an employee. Invite your friends.co-workers to evaluate you with anonymity. Limited seeding.  No compensation.  Continuing growth. Amazing tracking and data collection.

Noteworthy:

• Ogilvy and Dove not tracking anything, basically  (most of the Evolution success story was conjecture or quotes from third parties with no access to data.)
• Demographics and psychographics are dead.  Have to go deeper.  Interests.  Passions.  Etc.
• Most lift off viral is fractional.  Epidemic lift is extremely rare.

Image Credit:  NaOH

Comments

[Tamera Kremer]

Hey Sean,

interesting wrap up. I'm sorry I missed the event... too many deliverables and not enough hours in the day the last couple of months!

I am quite surprised that Let's Go Chev was included as a WOM campaign at the conference (and in your post). I really am baffled as to why this would be presented as a word of mouth program. A word of mouth campaign is about generating discussion via non-traditional channels organically, yet with the Chevy program, not only do they have multiple TV drivers to the site, but print and online ads as well. That's an interactive campaign in my book.

They may now be generating some positive WOM, but based on the WOMMA guidelines I don't see how it qualifies as anything other than an interactive program with offline drivers?

[sean Moffitt]

Sean,

Glad you enjoyed the conference, I expected to spend more time debriefing with you but obviously didn't.

No defence on the WiFi - somebody who is particularly zealous should docuemnt the best places for connectivity - Design Exchange has the same issues back in November. Mea culpa.

I knew you'd like the Monster work -- some it is pure genius and doesn't get enough press in these parts because it's not produced by some agency monolith operating out of Toronto.

It's too bad you couldn't stay the day -- we had a killer closing panel and some really interesting speakers that ranged from human interest, to heck we don't know either to that is some amazing data...hopefully I can get around to summarizing all the concurrent session pieces on Buzz Canuck.

With respect to the definition of word of mouth - I take a big umbrella approach to word of mouth and since I'm not yet part of WOMMA, I don't have to adopt everyone of their rules. Even our most ancient form of radio, newspaper and yes TV can build word of mouth. I missed Bill's talk on Chevy so I will plead ignorance but even GM starts with baby steps.

Note - I'm not a big fan of Bridezilla but after hearing him speak, I'll support Geoff Craig and the Unilever gang all day long for the spirit of experimentation.

Hopefully you enjoyed the day but please tell me you didn't miss the Kyle Macdoanld, one red paper clip piece - a classic human interest story.

[Sean Howard]

@Tamera. Thanks for the kind words and for stopping by! I have to admit I was sorta just amazed that anyone Canadian was doing anything amazing with technology like that. So I didn't pay too much attention to the WoM component of it. I'll leave you and Moffitt to battle out that one. ;)

@Moffitt. The Ogilvy folk just drive me batty because of their constant ignorance regarding measurement. But the speaker was a wonderful woman and I fully support the Dove shift to Cause Related Marketing. Wish more would shift to it. Sadly I did not make the end of the day. Attempted to send some folks back with my pass but I guess I crack the deadline whip too hard over here as they were all too busy. And no... I missed the paper clip dude. Gah. Sorry!! Overall, I had a great time and the CMA events are back on my map again.

[The Dead Artist]

Hey, good rant, we heard the noise all the way over here!

[Sean Howard]

LOL @ TDA.

Love your blog. The vid from beyond the grave is brilliant.

Saw you on plannersphere. Welcome to the dark side. ;)

[zoloft]

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