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Neither are outrageous ads, public stunts and giveaways. Instead, the authors
found the leading motivations for engaging WOM include:
Seemingly unexciting products and brands can ignite powerful and abundant
conversationsno extra pizzazz or coolness factor required.
While newness animates conversational interest in three of these four
motivations, its not the newness itself but the engagement, the verbslearning,
being, sharing, givingthat matter most to people. Instead of the old marketing
line, Sell the sizzle not the steak, Keller and Fay propose, the steakthe
productis the sizzle. And the steak need not come from a purple cow.
Seemingly unexciting products and brands can ignite powerful and abundant
conversationsno extra pizzazz or coolness factor required. As examples, the
authors cite data that show the most talked about brands include Walmart,
Verizon, Coca-Cola and McDonalds.
Blue Moon beer, its companys CMO explains, is presented in a tall Blue
Moon glass with a garnish of orangenot [so] that people say, Hey,
check out my Blue Moon, but its that people see it and ask the bartender
or drinker, Hey, what is that? which is a version of WOM strategy:
creating an interesting retail theater, which helps drive discovery and
conversation. The story behind the orange is that the product contains
orange and coriander, but the slice not only brings out the flavor, it sparks
the talk.
The same company uses cold-activated cans for its Coors brand. If you
want people to talk about your product, youve got to give them something
to talk about, says the same CMO, [and] Id rather that they talk about
my product than my commercial. To that end, the cans turn color when
theyre cold: When these Mountains turn blue, your beer is as cold as the
Rockies is written on the can. As vernacular for My beer is cold, he
says, youve got My mountains are blue, which reinforces and
dramatizes the idea of Rocky Mountain cold refreshment.
Apples white ear buds were designed to be noticeable in crowds, to hit
consumers with a bit of peer pressure.
The iconic glowing Apple logo on the lid of a MacBook is upside down if
you are the user preparing to open your computer. Why? The logo is
designed for other people nearby to see once the laptop is open: the logo
is a conversation prompt, a cue for social influence. (The authors are
perhaps unaware that the logo on early Mac Powerbooks was the other
way around, so Im a bit skeptical that the change was made with the
deliberate social influencing intent the authors ascribe. Apple may just
have been queasy when they realized that, for years, they had been
representing their own logo upside down when seen publicly.)
Aside from these insightful examples, the scientific nature of Keller and Fays
research also provides some juicy statistics to help justify the investment in faceto-face marketing and deflate the online social media bubble.
90 percent of brand conversations take place offline.
71 percent of 1.2 billion tweets studied produced no response, suggesting they
fell on deaf ears.
The remaining 23 percent did get a reply (but generally just one).
Only 6 percent of tweets are retweeted.
Twitter, Keller and Fay conclude, has great potential to be viral, but most of the
time it just doesnt work that way.
(I cant wait to pull out some of these numbers the next time Im told I have to
tweet more or create another product Facebook page. I may do it, but I wont be
under the misperception that its worth more than it is.)
Bottom line
How else can we apply the data, stories and insights from this book to the
exhibits and events business?
Heres my suggestion. At MC, our output, our product, comprises exhibit
structures, meetings, events and environments. We are responsible for the
physical contexts in which peoples social behavior plays out. One way to think of
what we do is that we design and build containers. Their purpose is to contain
(that is, prompt, maintain and enhance) conversations about a brand and its
products. Whether were planning an event, an environment or an exhibit, we
need to start from the product story and create the context from there. Our test is
how effectively we enable the learning, sharing, being and giving that people
naturally want to engage in anyway, and enable those social activities around the
product and the brand.
The Face-to-Face Book provides a number of valuable insights that not only can
inform your exhibit design and event planning, but can also stimulate the
conversations about why exhibits are designed and planned the way they are.
After all, whenever you are able to explain how, for example, structures and
visual cues can be scientifically applied to drive the conversations that bring
about proven brand results, you elevate your value to your company. And thats
worth talking about.