2010: The year Word of Mouth becomes a big planning consideration

Claire Myerscough, business intelligence director at News International, explains why ‘word of mouth’ will be more important than ever in 2010…

Advertisers have known for quite some time how influential personal recommendation can be on consumer decision making. We consumers naturally place great value on the opinions of those that we trust and consider to have similar needs and desire as us (or indeed those who we aspire to be like). Recently published research now shows that recommendations from family and friends trump all other touch points when it comes to influencing purchases.

Far from being out of the blue, Word of Mouth (WoM) research seems to have been around for an age, and first really came to the attention of the media industry through a combination of Malcolm Gladwell’s seminal book ‘The Tipping Point’ and MEC’s pioneering work ‘Where’s Debbie?’. It was also introduced through TGI, but this only whetted people’s appetite, and didn’t take off.

The increase in digital budgets meant word of mouth began to develop under the new guise of ‘buzz’ tools, which provide a plethora of data, especially within social media, but typically only reflect the non-spoken world of word of mouth. The new research which is covered here shows that online represents a very small proportion of ‘conversations’.

In understanding the dynamics of word of mouth, the simple concept of “Speakers and Listeners” is key. The speaker is the vehicle of the brand message and there are millions of speakers out there every day connecting with millions of willing listeners who are potential purchasers of millions of products.

It goes without saying that some of the most active speakers are those that are ‘in the know’ and naturally savvy when it comes to both consumer and media brands. If we could identify the relative influence that consumers of different media channels had on others it would present the opportunity for richer more engaging, results driven communications.

Despite previous attempts to try and achieve this, we haven’t got as far as creating a currency for word of mouth, but data due to be launched through TouchPoints this summer will be a leap forward in being able to do so.

The research I’m referring to comes from the Keller Fay research agency in New York, who came to the UK to present this January as a guest of the IPA. Keller Fay had been asked to contribute towards this year’s IPA Touchpoints questionnaire which is now eagerly anticipated by planners, researchers and media owners.

In the US, Keller Fay already has a well established panel which continuously measures brand conversations called ‘TalkTrack’. The study has been running for nearly four years, is conducted via 36,000 online interviews (the NRS conducts the same number of interviews in a year) and tracks 350,000 brand conversations per year.

Interestingly, only 6% of ‘conversations’ occur in the online space with 77% talking face-to-face. A fifth of conversations are stimulated by advertising, with 48% of consumer brand conversations referring to marketing or media. Great endorsement for our industry.

Keller Fay has also identified a group of people that provide an acceleration and amplification effect and they have named them The Influentials (or conversation catalysts). This group offer up to eight times more value in the context of WoM and are the bullseye for marketers. Keller Fay is able to identify them against product categories and within media properties.

It is gratifying to note that for print media Keller Fay’s research shows that national newspapers attract a very high proportion of conversation catalysts. This reflects our own research that shows newspaper readers naturally have a veracious appetite for opinion and debate. They like to have an opinion and love to share it. With journalists such as Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times) and money guru Martin Lewis (News Of The World), what the newspapers offer is good fodder for the chain of influence and WoM.

In summary, this research and the 2010 TouchPoints will enable planners to use a richer and more qualitative measure, or group of measures, to differentiate media channels that otherwise have a similar demographic profile. A far cry from the commoditisation model which is driving decisions all too frequently. Its use will no doubt be fuelled by the very power of word of mouth.