Live, late-breaking blogging

Alright - I'm going to try something different during this session (Blogging and Word of Mouth). Instead of taking notes and saving them in my fun New Communications Folder, I'm going to do a little stream of conciousness and hit publish over and over again so you can get my thoughts on this great topic as I'm thinking them.
Panel:
Max Kalehoff, VP Marketing of Neilson Buzzmetrics
Matt Galloway, blogger, IT dude, The Basement
Cydni Tetro, VP Product and Corporate Marketing of Next Page

Kickoff - brown and bubbly isn't good (Pepsi). This is going to be good.

WOM - increasingly loud discussion about WOM marketing. What is the difference between WOM and WOMM?

WOM: people talking outside of your company, about your product, brand.
WOMM: how marketers leverage WOM - powerful listening component, and how to amplify WOM. (MG)

Traditional marketing is not going away, but understanding how consumers are changing the way they interact with trad. marketing can help tailor the effort to start relevant conversations. (MG)

Find your people. Find your audience. If they aren't talking, create a venue for them to have a voice. (MG)

How do we deal with online detractors? Negative influentials. How? Engage them.

60 years ago, WOM was the way consumers learned about and were persuaded to purchase products (CT).

If you tell someone you are listening (even if they are detractors), the amount of good WOM they generate will grow. Detraction will change. (MG)

Dealing with detractors: Listen, find the psychographics, reach out to that group.

There is sometimes some mass trends that go on, but you have to take a broader sweep to realize if that trend/WOM/detraction is even relevant to your core audience. (MK)

Paid media is never going to go away, but it's changing and the system is broken. We have to mix things up, and WOM is at the top of the list. Various disciplines bring in various strengths and weaknesses.

PR firms: get the WOM concept better than anyone else - the downside? PR has never worked with huge budgets, don't get the research element. Do get unpaid media benefits.
(MK)

New titles within corporations related to WOM.

1) understand what people are saying and who they are saying it to.
2) WOM isn't about "making" people say things about you.
3) If orgs aren't prepared to listen to feedback (positive and negative) and then DO SOMETHING about it, WOM isn't for that org. Are your learnings going to change your products? Marketing efforts? Communications strategies? Yes, yes, yes? Good. (MG)

Everyone owns WOM initiatives (PR, Marketing, R&D). Integration has to happen, people have to be in sync. (MG)

Consumer-generated content will be the story of 2006. YouTube gets more hits than NBC.com. (MK)

Even the big media will be forced to change. Get up to pace or be overrun by new media companies. In 2006 the ad model will start to get figured out. We don't know what those models will look like (Google has a good model). (CT)

Large companies will have to find ways to bypass traditional outlets and involve consumers in a more direct way. (MG)

Where we're at right now: there's an inequity between consumer voice and company voice. They have the same abilities to go out and market, but companies are shackled by what they can say and how they can say it.
Consumers can say whatever, whenever and two whomever. (MG)


Andy note: this was great. Check these guys/girl out - they are insightful and have their finger on the pulse of the market. Great stuff to end the day with.