Mobilizing Your Message

Ok – so before I start writing about how to produce creative for word-of-mouth, can anyone remember when the last time was that so many people around the US got together and actually protested something with such vigor? I’m talking about the immigration debate that is going on right now and the hundreds of thousands of protesters gathering and marching in cities around the country. Talk about a word-of-mouth campaign. A single issue...a myriad of messages and stories…all mobilized by Influencers in the community.

Ok-back to the creative. One of the great debates that exist with word-of-mouth has to do with control. Traditional marketers are all about top down marketing; strategies drive tactics. A question we at the shop here have always had is “How can you come up with long term strategic plans when you cannot predict the future –especially your competition?” We believe in tactical-based strategies when it comes to word-of-mouth. In other words, strategy needs to be developed from a deep knowledge in the actual tactics of the business itself. With an obvious nod to Al Ries and Jack Trout’s book, Bottom-Up Marketing, the only way you can nurture the type of story that people want to talk to others about is by creating half the story…from the marketers’ perspective. This is the creative. By giving people whom we call Influencers half the story, they have a trigger to complete it and make it their own. It’s kind of like that movie with Sean Connery where he’s a writer and he has the kid from the hood take some of his stuff so he can write some of his own stories. When you're ready to execute the Influencer Program, the result of this collaboration between marketer, agency and Influencer is an authentic story that you helped nurture and bring to the surface. Oh, by the way – you can control certain elements of the creative even if the Influencer has a 50% ownership. You can have an underlying creative platform that’s steeped in the brand essence and that won’t change. You can make certain everything follows that. AND you have to constantly reinvent the triggers…because…sing with me…..now that you have that relationship with the customer/consumer that you’ve always wanted, keeping things fresh should be at the top of your list of priorities.

I think it was Hispanic DJs in LA that rallied everyone…normally competing against one another, they rallied everyone to the cause – very cool.