The Basement

What do these market research, public relations, and marketing companies have in common?

CRM Metrix
ComBlu
Gfk NOP
Millward Brown
Starcom Worldwide
VoodooVox
Burson-Marsteller
Simmons
Start Sampling
comScore Networks
Decision Analyst
Nielsen//NetRatings
Brandimensions

They all presented at the recent WOMMA Conference in Chicago.

The all blathered on about Word-of-Mouth marketing – you know – get involved in the conversation, go to where your customers are talking about you, come up with some tools to measure stuff, blah, blah, blah, and oh BTW buy my expensive traditional research.

AND NONE OF THEM HAVE CORPORATE BLOGS!

I'm not sure that I'd be interested in taking, much less buying, WOM advice from anyone who doesn't eat their own dog food.

On the other hand, here is a list of blogs maintained by the other presenters. You know, the ones that practice what they preach, which is to say, the ones that are cluetrained.

WOMMA Womnibus
Burson-Marsteller's e-fluentials blog <--- Newly added, I originally missed this blog
BuzzMetrics Mouthpiece
Intelliseek Intelliblog
Intelliseek BlogWebinar
BIGresearch's When Customers Talk
Dr. Walter Carl's Word-of-Mouth Communication Study
Future Now's A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect
BzzAgent's Beelog
The Phelon Group's The Reference Steward^SM Blog
Jupiter Research Analyst Weblogs
George Silverman's Word-of-Mouth Marketing Blog

Most of the slides from the presentations are available in PDF here on the WOMMA site. Some really good stuff that I hope to write about later. I'm particularly impressed with The Phelon Group's presentation and website – includes blog, forums, email subscriptions, white papers, etc. Very professional, good example of doing everything right.

And some negative examples...

CRM Metrix slides have a footer that says "Contents may not be shared with any parties outside client and CRMMetrix without written permission." Uhhh, HELLO, this is posted on a public website for the freakin' WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ASSOCIATION. The cat may be out of the bag.

Jon Berry's slides are labeled "Proprietary and Confidential". Hmmmm. About that word confidential – in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means." Not don't worry, not many folks are using this new fangled Internet thing yet.

Seriously folks, especially those of your talking about blogs, you really must be present to win. If your expect you customers to buy into this stuff, shouldn't you?

UPDATE: I originally overlooked Burson-Marsteller's e-fluentials blog. Thanks to Jonathan Carson, BuzzMetrics Mouthpiece for pointing this out. My sincerest appologies to Idil Cakim.
More of this conversation here, here and here.