Brand Autopsy

*** My WOM Enthusiast hat is on with this post.

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It’s a few weeks until WOMMA’s Creating Talkable Brands Conference (Nov. 18 – 20, Las Vegas). Sign-ups have been strong. And for good reason — the agenda is strong.

There are over 40 sessions with 4 learning tracks and 4 keynotes addresses (.pdf agenda). For each of the breakout sessions, WOMMA is pairing up a Brand with an Agency. So you’ll hear both perspectives, the brand-side and the agency-side, in each breakout.

To help make sense out of the packed agenda, I’ve been sharing highlights from Day 1 and Day 2 on the ALL THINGS WOM blog. Here’s a sample of how I’m breaking down the agenda...

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DAY ONE Highlights

The Annual State of Word of Mouth Address
[Wed. Nov. 18 | 2:00 - 2:45]
Dr. Walter Carl has been a fixture in past WOMMA Conferences. Of course he’ll share new information on measuring WOM, that’s what he’s known for. He’ll also give us marketers more ammunition to better sell-in our WOM programs up the corporate food chain.

KEYNOTE: The Anatomy of Buzz
[Wed. Nov. 18 | 3:00 - 3:45]
Emanuel Rosen, an author and marketer who helped to spark interest in word of mouth marketing nearly ten years ago with the publication of THE ANATOMY OF BUZZ, returns to keynote a WOMMA Conference. Earlier this year Emanuel updated his influential book on WOM to include new learnings, new methods, and new case studies. His presentation will share the latest insight on all things WOM.

Choosing the Right Agency for your Social Media Marketing Projects
[Wed. Nov. 18 | 5:15 - 6:00]
David Witt (public relations manager, General Mills), Christine Morrison (social media manager, Intuit), and Steve Knox (ceo, Procter & Gamble Tremor) will advise brand marketers on what to look for in a social media agency partner. The beauty of this session is you’ll get both sides of the story (brand and agency) to help you better prepare your RFP and to whittle down the seemingly endless agency options. A must-attend session for brand marketers.

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DAY TWO Highlights
Answers from Academics to WOM’s Toughest Questions
[Thurs. Nov. 19 | 9:35 – 10:30am]
There is an art and a science to word of mouth marketing. This session will focus more on the science of WOM. Brad Fay from the KellerFay Group will ask Professors (Walter Carl & Jonah Berger) and PhDs (Lezan Aksoy & Barak Libai) important questions about the motivations for why people talk. The differences between how online and offline WOM spreads will no doubt be covered. And, I’m expecting a heated debate about targeting “influentials” versus “influenceables.” Answers from these academics will be steeped in research and deep analysis. Every marketer is sure to learn something new from this session.

True Believers: Turning Skeptical Co-Workers into Progressive WOM Marketers
[Thurs. Nov. 19 | 11:00 – 11:45am]
I read the proposal Sean McDonald (Ant’s Eye View) and Sam Decker (Bazzarvoice) sent in for this session and thought this will be the most creative session at the conference. Sean and Sam have outlined all the corporate characters who can derail the success of a WOM marketing plan. We’ll meet the finance guy ("Eddie Excel") who always cries out for the ROI. “Fanny Facebook” is the marketer manager who thinks all she needs is a Facebook fan page, without any strategy, and WOM will happen. “Freddy Filabuster” shows up to grandstand against a marketer’s plan, but he’s only interested in advancing his career and not advancing the business.

Fun and creative stuff, for sure. But the session will also be helpful in giving us advice on overcoming the objections and misguided approaches from co-workers, thus, paving the way for our WOM marketing plans to succeed.

Power Lunch with Kristian Bush of Sugarland
[Thurs. Nov. 19 | 12:45 – 1:45]
Sugarland is one of the more popular country music acts, winning Grammy awards and winning fans. Much of Sugarland’s success stems from the band’s LOVE THE FANS philosophy. The band does creative things to keep their fans involved from scavenger hunts for hidden tickets to a continuous stream of interesting tweets on Twitter.

A band is indeed a brand. We marketers can learn lots from how Sugarland broke through the clutter of country music bands to become a success. Ted Wright from Fizz will set the stage for Kristian Bush, singer and guitarist from Sugarland, to share how Sugarland uses word of mouth marketing strategies to make his band a success.

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That's only a smidgen of all the happenings on Day 1 & Day 2 at the upcoming Creating Talkable Brands Conference. I haven't begun to highlight the afternoon sessions on Day 2 nor the morning sessions on Day 3. (BTW, you can save $200 on the registration fee. Learn more here.)

BAKED IN: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor gets the Marketing Masterpiece Theatre treatment.

(Yep ... it's another dramatic reading of an influential business book by Sir Wilton Norman Chamberlain III.)

RSS Readers ... click here to view the video.

[NOTE: I often receive free copies of biz books from publishers and publicists. However, I spent my money for my copy of BAKED IN.]

The Dachis Group is ringing up successes. They’ve hired a talented team. Been backed by big dollars from Austin Ventures. Gone global with the acquisition of London-based Headshift. And, introduced a new business term: Social Business Design.

Kudos to everyone involved.

However, I need help with the term, Social Business Design. The current design of its definition seems flawed to me.

I tried explaining/defining the term to a friend the other day but did it poorly. (I think I know what it means, but I don’t.) It’s about using online applications (like ‘social media’ tools) to help businesses improve communication across all departments inside the company and communication across all vendor partners and customers outside the company to create a more efficient and more coordinated way of doing business.

At least that’s what I thought. After reading Dachis Group Managing Partner Peter Kim’s short explanation of what Social Business Design is, I’m totally lost.

Read through Peter’s explanation and see if you can make sense of it. If you can make sense of it, do us all a favor and leave your easier to understand definition for "Social Business Design" in the comments section. (Thanks.)

Peter Kim writes: “Social Business Design is the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated systems, process, and culture.

Its goal: helping organizations improve value exchange among constituents.

Social Business Design uses a framework of four mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive archetypes: ecosystem, hivemind, dynamic signal, and metafilter. This model can be applied to improve customer participation, workforce collaboration, and business partner optimization. Doing so provides insight to help measure and manage business to produce improved and emergent outcomes.”

Clearly my WOM Enthusiast hat is on with this post. (I work with WOMMA.)

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Last week was a big week for marketing, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released new guidelines (.pdf document) for how businesses can use endorsements and testimonials in marketing. It’s a complicated and nuanced matter. Hopefully the presentations below will help you better understand what has happened and what marketers must be doing now.

For backstory purposes ... the FTC is in the business of protecting consumers from unscrupulous business practices, the commission believes consumers must be protected from being influenced by bloggers who fail to be transparent and disclose they have been compensated by an advertiser. The worry, of course, is compensated bloggers may not give their honest opinion about the products or services they’ve been compensated to write about.

Word of mouth marketing works best when it is credible. Each time word of mouth is faked and manufactured, the credibility of the most trusted marketing medium is damaged.

All that said, the end game for us marketers is that any marketing program we develop to spark conversations, especially online, we need to ask for disclosure from anyone involved. Bloggers we send products to for test drive purposes, need to mention somewhere in their writing if they received the product from someone other paying for it themselves.

To help sift through the nuances of the new regulations, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) hosted a webinar last week. In this webinar, Paul Rand, WOMMA’s president elect and CEO of the Zocalo Group discussed how these new regulations will impact marketers with WOMMA’s legal counsel Anthony DiResta from the Manatt Phelps & Phillips law firm.

You can view an archived, unedited 60-minute version of the webinar on SlideShare. An edited version (10:30 minutes) can be viewed below:

SHORT VERSION | Understanding the FTC Guidelines

View more documents from Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

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During the second part of the webinar, Paul Rand asked Anthony DiResta to give a legal perspective to important questions concerning how businesses and bloggers should practically address these new FTC guidelines.

I’ve edited this Q&A discussion from the webinar into a short presentation, which I encourage you to watch below. Questions asked and answered in this presentation include:

• How will the FTC track and monitor compliance to the new regulations?
• Will existing online marketing programs be exempt from these new regulations?
• Should marketers attempt to fix old blogger outreach programs?
• Does the FTC see a difference in sending an ‘influencer’ free product versus paying someone to blog about a product?

Practical Answers to Important Questions about the FTC Guidelines

View more documents from Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Starbucks is asking its partners (employees) to make short videos about their day-to-day life at Starbucks. Love it. The company will share these videos online at www.MyStarbucksStory.com. Again, love it.

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Early in 2008 Starbucks did a two-minute documentary on Young Han, a Starbucks barista, talking about his “Got Milk” photo shoot and his appreciation for the Starbucks Coffee Company. The video was posted on YouTube for everyone to see. (However, the video is no longer available.)

In a post from Feb. 2008 I mentioned how this video "works great as a recruitment video. Not slick. Not scripted. Just genuine moments and reflections..."  I also mentioned how Starbucks should STRONGLY CONSIDER encouraging its young and talented workforce to post videos of why they feel a connection to Starbucks similar to the brilliant Deloitte & Touche Film Fest idea.

More ideas from Starbucks empowering its talented workforce to showcase personality will go a long way in not just helping recruiting new employees but also in recruiting some lost customers to believe in the company again.

On the Post2Post Book Tour we’re talking about Jeremy Gutsche’s EXPLOITING CHAOS book.

Jeremy advises companies on trends and innovation. He also is the driving force behind TrendHunter.com. His book is chock-full of case study examples on how to use “perspective,” “experimental failure,” “intentional destruction,” and “customer obsession” to thrive during times of change

I’ve compiled a short list of “money quotes” from the book.  Riffle through the SlideShare deck below for tasty knowledge nuggets.

View more presentations from John Moore.

For more thorough insights into Jeremy and his book ... read posts from the Marketing Fresh Peel, the Essential Orange, 800-CEO-READ, and Innoblog.

Emily Yellin's YOUR CALL IS (not that) IMPORTANT TO US gets the Marketing Masterpiece Theatre treatment.

RSS Readers ... click here to view the video.