Word of mouth Marketing - umbrella terms: descriptions and some examples

1.
WOMM umbrella terms
BUZZ Marketing
Def: The interaction of consumers and users of a product or service serve to amplify the original
marketing message. It can be a special hook, event, promotion. More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_buzz
Eg: ATHF Boston Bomb Scare (2007). On January 31, 2007, in Boston
there was panic in the streets. Bomb squads were finding electronic
packages attached to the bases of bridges. These had a mocking
character with its middle finger presented for all to see. The police
BLEW ONE UP. A few hours later they realized that the packages
were none other than Mooninites! The devices turned out to be
battery‐powered LED placards with an image of a cartoon character
called a Mooninite. The placards were part of a campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie
Film for Theaters, a film based on the animated TV series Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF) on Cartoon
Network's Adult Swim late‐night programming block. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kdP8WBB4lI
Viral marketing
Def: ‘Viral marketing’ or ‘viral advertising’ refer to marketing techniques that use pre‐existing social
networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as
product sales) through self‐replicating viral processes. Viral promotions may take the form of video
clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text
messages; branded material, websites, blogs, advergames, widgets, bligets, videos, utilities,
collaboration tools etc. that sneezers spread. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
Eg: ParkRidge47, Vote Different (2007). Creator of the '1984' anti‐
Clinton ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G‐lMZxjo. More:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtgfYMDHJfs,
http://personaldemocracy.com/content/who‐parkridge47

2. Stealth marketing
Def: a subset of guerrilla marketing, where consumers do not realize they are being marketed to.
Stealth marketing can take place both online and offline. For example, people may pose as liking and
therefore recommend a product on various internet forums, only for these people to in fact be
working for a company. Offline strategies include actors posing as ordinary people in busy locations,
where they can convincingly use certain products and interact with nearby consumers without them
realizing that they are victims of stealth marketing. Also known as ‘undercover marketing’. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_marketing
Eg: Bree, lonelyGirl15 (2006‐2008). Interactive web‐based video series,
focusing on the life of a teenage girl named Bree, whose YouTube
username is the eponymous "lonelygirl15", but the show does not
reveal its fictional nature to its audience. More:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lonelygirl15,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15
Eg: Sony Ericsson (2002) hired 60 actors in 10 major cities, and had them "accost strangers and ask
them: Would you mind taking my picture?" The actor then handed the stranger a brand new picture
phone while talking about how cool the new device was. "And thus an act of civility was converted
into a branding event."
Stealth marketing strategies and tools: http://www.optimum7.com/internet‐marketing/business‐
online/stealth‐marketing.html, http://www.stealthmarketingstrategies.com/
Influencer marketing
Def: Identifying and finding the influencers. A form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of
recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of
individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence
over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influencer_marketing, http://www.influencermarketing.com/
Evangelist marketing
Def: An advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM) in which companies develop
customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince
others to buy and use it. The customers become voluntary advocates, actively spreading the word on
behalf of the company. It is about turning most loyal customers into citizen marketers. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism_marketing, http://www.evangelistmarketing.com/

3. Street marketing
Def: Interacting at popular offline places. Also known as Street teams promotions. A Street team is a
term used in marketing to describe a group of people who 'hit the streets' promoting an event or a
product. 'Street Teams' are a powerful promotional tool that has been adopted industry wide as a
standard line item in marketing budgets by entertainment companies, record labels, the tech
industry, corporate brand marketers, new media companies and direct marketers worldwide. Street
team members that are highly trained are now called Brand Ambassadors. Usually unpaid, street
teams for bands and artists are still often composed of teenagers who are rewarded for eg. with free
band merchandise or show/concert access, in exchange for a variety of actions: placing stickers and
posters in their communities, bringing friends to the shows,
convincing friends to buy band merchandise, phoning your
local radio station to request their songs be played, bringing
CDs to local DJs in the clubs where they work, putting up
posters, posting to band forums, maintaining e‐zines or
websites dedicated to the band… More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_team
Eg: Buzz Oven. In the 7 years since its inception, Buzz‐Oven and its volunteers have distributed over
200,000 free CDs to teenagers all over North Texas and held over 75 All Ages concerts. Watch the
video at: http://www.buzz‐oven.com/
Guerilla marketing
Def: The concept of guerrilla marketing was
invented as an unconventional system of
promotions that relies on time, energy and
imagination rather than a big marketing budget.
Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are
unexpected and unconventional, potentially
interactive, and consumers are targeted in
unexpected places. The objective of guerrilla
marketing is to create a unique, engaging and
thought‐provoking concept to generate buzz, and
consequently turn viral. The term was coined and
defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing. The term has since entered the
popular vocabulary and marketing textbooks. More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing and http://www.gmarketing.com/
Eg: IKEA Bus Stop (see photo). More: http://sparxoo.com/2009/06/22/top‐5‐guerilla‐marketing‐
strategies/

4.
Social marketing
Def: Social marketing is the planning and implementation of
programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from
commercial marketing. Social marketing was born as a discipline in
the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the
same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to
consumers could be used to sell ideas, attitudes and behaviors.
Kotler and Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with
respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to
influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the
general society." More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_marketing, http://www.social‐
marketing.com/Whatis.html,
Eg: Stop AIDS campaign. More: http://www.social‐marketing.org/success/cs‐stopaids.html
Social networks
A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are
tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship,
financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
PR 2.0
Integrating the PR efforts in the social media sphere. Other terms: Online PR, e‐PR, Internet PR,
Digital PR… More: http://www.seo‐pr.com/public‐relations‐turning‐into‐what‐pr2.0.shtml and
http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/pr2essentials.pdf
Blog marketing
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via web blogs. These blogs differ
from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic.
Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their
products and services. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_marketing

5. Crowd‐sourcing
Despite the jargony name, crowdsourcing
is a very real and important business
idea. Definitions and terms vary, but the
basic idea is to tap into the collective
intelligence of the public at large to
complete business‐related tasks that a
company would normally either perform
itself or outsource to a third‐party
provider. Yet free labor is only a narrow
part of crowdsourcing's appeal. More
importantly, it enables managers to
expand the size of their talent pool while
also gaining deeper insight into what
customers really want.
Jeff Howe, a contributing editor to Wired magazine, first coined the term "crowdsourcing" in a June
2006 article and writes the blog crowdsourcing.com.
Eg: Unilever has recently decided to drop its ad agency of 16 years, Lowe, and has turned to the
crowdsourcing platform IdeaBounty to find creative ideas for its next TV campaign. Unilever has
worked with Lowe on the snack food brand Peperami since 1993, but has decided to submit their
brief out to the public, rather than a small team of creatives. More: http://www.ideabounty.com/,
Eg: Pepsi launched a marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look
of a Pepsi can. The winners would receive a $10,000 prize, and their artwork would be featured on
500 million Pepsi cans around the United States. More: http://www.designourpepsican.com/ and
http://www.pepsigallery.com/?or=dopc
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing.com.
Community marketing
Product seeding
Twitter marketing
Testimonials
Marketing 2.0
…etc.