The Basement

The WOMMA Conference was awesome! The WOMMA staff has posted a good recap and links to other (including me – thanks!) discussing their impressions. I have lots, and lots to say and I'm going to try to spread it out over the next several days. I'm gonna start breadth first.

Big Picture Thoughts

There is an unbelievable amount of interests in WOMM from CPG, agencies, researchers, brand managers, product managers, internet strategists, etc. I have never been in a room with so many people (about 300ish I'd estimate), so focused for so long.

Who was there? There were a few names I recognized. Maybe you've heard of some of there: A&E Television, American Express, AOL, Apple Computer, Audible, Bausch & Lomb, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burson-Marsteller, Citrix Online, Cold Stone Creamery, E.W. Scripps Interactive Media, Fiskars, GE, General Mills, Fidelity Investment, GfK NOP, Hallmark Cards, IBM, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Jupiter Research, Loreal, March of Dimes, Microsoft, Millward Brown, Nokia, Pepsi-Cola, SIGG USA, TaylorMade/Adidas Golf, Verizon Wireless, Walt Disney Co., Young & Rubicam and Yahoo! to name a few.

Now, this might not sound too surprising, but when you consider that WOMMA is less than a year old, this is really impressive. Well, at least I'm impressed.

There is also a clear sense of urgency. No one is really sure exactly what WOMM is (except me, of course), but everyone is certain that they need to figure it out quickly.

Remarkable Quotes & Thoughts

There were several incredible, thought provoking and interesting presentations – in fact, I've never been to any conference with such a consistently high level of presentation quality - and over the next several days I've going to be wallowing in some of the details. But tonight, sticking with my breadth first theme, I want to give you some quotes and thought from presenters throughout the day that resonated with me.

Andy Senovitz, CEO WOMMA

"URUE – You are the User Experience."

"The truth always rises to the surface."

"Marketing is easy – earn the respect and recommendations of your customer and they will do the rest."

Seth Godin, uh, well, he's Seth Godin

"It's NOT your mouth." (perhaps my favorite quote of the day)

"Ideas that spread, win."

"Close and cheap isn't a business strategy."

"If you define marketing as spending money to promote a finished product, you will fail."

"You don't grow by meeting needs."

"Apple is not a computer company, they're a fashion company."

Dave Balter, Founder/President BzzAgent, Co-author of Grapevine

"40% of every WOM dialog includes something about another media." (citing study by Dr. Walter Carl, super genius)

"Companies come to us and as 'We want help with WOMM, but we only want good WOM.'" (heavily paraphrased)

"50% of the bad stuff is about the company's response – not the product." (also paraphrased)

"80% of WOM is offline." (Citing NOP World – NOTE TO DAVE: It's GfK NOP now.)

To the above point, Jonathan Carson of BuzzMetrics added about online WOM - "From 0% to 20% is a short time it pretty good." (paraphrased)

Gary Stein, Jupiter Research

In response to a question about ROI of WOMM asked of the panel he was moderating when none of the panelists responded- "Someone mentions ROI and everyone scatters!"

Dave Evans, Digital Voodoo

Dave's vote for the name of CGM is "Consideration Marketing"

On the significance of broadband internet connectivity - "It's no that it' fast, it's that it's always on." (hugely overlooked and important point I think)

Paul Rand, Partner, Managing Director, Ketchum

Presented the phrase "Hear Me's" as a name for bloggers (usually with negative feedback) who desire to be heard. I included this so the folks at Volkswagen would know what to call me.

Laurie Weisberg, SVP, Informative

We've all been talking about the HBR article and the "Would you recommend me..." question, but Laurie presented what I thought was a great idea about the use of the question in practice. When you identify a category influencer you can use the recommend question to separate the promoters from the detractors for a particular product.

That and I could listen to Laurie's accent all day long.

Mark Hughes, Author of Buzzmarketing

"Put your brand second. Story first. Brand second."

Troy Young, VP of Interactive Strategy, Organic

"Strip back to the truth and get rid of the bullshit that surrounds the product."

IMO, Troy was one of the most entertaining presenters – you should see his sexy hairy belly.

George Silverman, Author of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

"I have a client that is coming out with a product that will have lots of PR. He doesn't want to do blogs because he is afraid it will undermine the PR. I think this is so insane that I cannot answer." (paraphrased slightly) I think it's insane to Mr. Silverman. I have several discussions in which people used the world "fear" in association with blogs – I think that's insane too.

Mike Nazzaro, CEO Intelliseek

"Positive WOM is more influential than negative WOM." (I think this is another overlooked and important point.)

Terry Pittman, Exec. Director, Digital Services Market Research Group, AOL

"[The Cluetrain Manifesto is] profoundly important reading." This one sentence has made me begin to reconsider my opinion of AOL. Now if Terry can just get them to stop sending me CDs.

"Thank you for your attention." I just thought that it was interesting that out of 23 speakers in front of 300 people, all concerned about getting attention through respect, Terry was the only one to use this particular phrase. You're welcome Terry. I sincerely appreciate it.

Eileen Campbell, President, Global Development, Millward Brown

"There are type types of WOM: buzz and advocacy."

Jon Gabriel, Store Design Manager, Cold Stone Creamery

"In summary, chocolate covered crickets are good..."

Linda Bennett, Head of Buzz Marketing, Yahoo!

"Connect the unconnected." She said lots of good stuff, but it was late in the day. I particularly love this simple idea though.

And finally, my pick for the most informative, relevant and impactful presentation of the day goes to the very last one of the day: Gaylene Nagel, Senior Promotions Manager, Electronic Arts – more on this in an upcoming post.

One last note, I sure wish Pete Blackshaw had been there. This would have made my experience absolutely perfect. Understandable of course, he's got a couple of other things to worry about.