While on SlideShare I found this great side show on WOM.



Jeff

John Moore from Brand Autopsy posted a fun little Powerpoint on slideshare.com with his take on WOM. If you don't know about slideshare it's a Youtube for Powerpoint.

No matter how you feel someone else is right there with you. Sitevolume is a great way to check your thoughts and feeling against the online masses. Because on hot days like today, misery likes a lot of company.

Here is a plug for Andy Sernovitz's great blog on Word of Mouth Marketing: Damn I Wish I'd Thought of That. It's great. (Make sure you read today's post about Wowza.) But I especially liked this post today:

The Shortcut

I wish I wrote the following ... but Quinn McDonald said it better. I get a call like this every day.

The voice on the phone could have been any business call I get in the course of a day.
“I’m an artist, and a coach, and I teach business communications.”
“Great,” I say, and almost always, I know what’s coming.
“I’ve noticed on your website that you teach journaling classes, even incorporate them in business seminars,” the eager voice says.
“You are right,” I say waiting for the next question.
“Well, I’m having trouble getting a lot of people in my class. And you’ve had this up on your site for a while. So you must be doing something right. Can you give me some tips and shortcuts so I can be successful?”
It’s seldom that I am at a loss for words, but this is a sure way to make me speechless. Lacking understanding, I aim for clarity.
“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you,” I ask, although I’m beginning to think I do.
“I want you to give me shortcuts and tips to be successful,” the voice says.
“What are you doing now that works?” I ask.
“Well, I’ve been a coach for about six months and word of mouth isn’t working,” she says.
“Word of mouth is a method that comes after there are enough happy mouths to talk about your work. Word of mouth takes about four years to work,” I say.
“What? That can’t be. Look at all those people on the internet, and their sites, and all the ones that get thousands of orders overnight,” she says, what about them?
“I don’t know about them,” I answer honestly, “Here’s what I can tell you about my success. I work 120 hours a week, divided over 7 days. I make mistakes, I fail, I figure out what went wrong. I do something else. I advertise, I use every opportunity I can find, some work better than others. I don’t have a secret, and I don’t know any shortcuts.”
The voice at the other end of the phone is quiet.
“You won’t help me. Women are supposed to help each other,” she says.
“I am helping you. I’m telling you from my experience that there is no shortcut. I can give you tips, though.”
“OK, she says, GO.”
“Keep track of what works.
Listen more than talk.
Ask questions.
Go “huh?” a lot and wonder why.
Advertising takes longer to work than you think it should.
Run ads at least 7 times before you expect them to work.
Have a clear idea of what your business is about.
Know why what you do is different from what other people in the same line of work do.
Know what your features and benefits are, be ready to explain them.
Most people know features really well, but explaining the benefits of your service is the key to success.
Don’t ever undervalue yourself, but understand that value is a relative thing.
Don’t think everyone in your audience is rich, and don’t plan on having just rich people for an audience.”

Those are the best tips I know.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “So you won’t share shortcuts.”
“I can’t,” I say, wishing I had some myself. I’m not pushing 50, I’m dragging it, and I wish I had discovered some shortcuts.
“Can I ask you another question?” the voice asks.
“Sure, go ahead. If I know the answer, I’ll tell you.”
“Do you know someone else, maybe someone famous, who’ll share their shortcuts with me?”

Nicely said, Quinn.

These are the shortcuts I know:

• Work your ass off
• Try everything. You never know.
• Repeat what works. Stop doing what doesn't work.
• Make lots and lots of friends. You never know who can help you someday, so help them first.
• Read everything you can get your hands on, from people who aren't like you.

As long as I'm at it, here is the secret shortcut to losing weight:

• Eat less crap
• Exercise more

We are about to see something big.

It's a product from a small company in Ireland, Steorn. The device is called the "Orbo" and Steorn is claiming that it is nothing less than a perpetual motion machine. I say "claiming" because the chances of a device like this actually existing along with our current scientific understanding of the universe is literally zero. A perpetual motion machine violates the first law of thermodynamics:

"The increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings."
-from wikipedia

That is to say, energy can only be moved around, not created, and not destroyed.

So obviously this would be a big deal.

There are many skeptics. People are saying it's a scam or a social experiment. The most interesting theory however is that this is nothing more than a viral marketing campaign for a new video game from the Microsoft owned game developer Bungie Studios. The game is titled Halo3, and is scheduled for release Sep 25, 2007.

Right now there are hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals combing through the code of every page of Steorn's website. They are comparing Steorn imagery to that of individual frames in a trailer for Halo 3. You can read some of the discussions about this theory on both Steorn's own official forum as well as well as a teamxbox forum dedicated to Halo 3.

Even if this isn't a marketing campaign for the game, the interest in the game Halo3 is seeing a predictable spike.

Is this a new kind of viral campaign? One where the story is so difficult to connect with a product that the story itself is newsworthy? (ex: coverage on Fox via Youtube)

Viral marketing is memetic engineering. Just like with genes, engineering with memes can easily get out of control.

-Will