Sharing food and drink has always been our ultimate social facilitator; a way to connect and compete on a personal, social and political scale. Hospitality is a form of conversation in itself.
So, the blossoming of food- and beverage-based communities in social media should come as no surprise. From quirky personal blogs such as eggbaconchipsandbeans to big-branded destinations such as Delia Online, the internet is awash with people gathering to discuss comestibles.
Even the most traditional companies have had to acknowledge that cynical consumers are no longer in thrall to the image they project. Research shows that consumers are now influenced by independent, peer-to-peer word of mouth above all other forms of advertising when deciding whether to buy into a brand.
However, many brands and agencies approach word of mouth as a short-term fix; a zeitgeisty digital add-on. How can they drive a bit of buzz around the launch of their latest beer? How many click-throughs can they get to their chocolate viral? They’re missing the point. Word of mouth drives our behaviour as consumers and as people, in our online and offline lives – including how and what we eat and drink, and who with. It’s a discipline that should be at the heart of the whole brand, from how employees communicate, to packaging and PR.
It takes a long-term commitment and a willingness to change, but when approached in a sustained and pervasive way, it can bring extraordinary results, generating brand evangelism of a depth, emotional engagement and effectiveness rarely achieved with traditional marketing.
One of the reasons that brands are reluctant to fully commit to word of mouth is because it involves an acceptance that the location of their power has shifted. When you’re used to crafting a slick brand message, complete with approved visuals and mandatory font, it’s shocking to see some kid on YouTube splicing your expensive ad with a clip of a dancing chicken. But the paradigm has shifted when only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs, while 60% trust consumer product ratings and reviews.
However personable and entertaining brands make their blog or Twitter feed, their customers are really looking to their peers to make up their minds. When UGC (user-generated content) is predicted to make up 70% of all online content by 2010, spending thousands of dollars on professionally produced microsites and virals looks distinctly like missing the point.
Last month, Budweiser shut down its expensive video hosting platform Bud.TV after consumers failed to embrace the brand-produced content locked into the site. These days, users expect to be able to embed brand content across their own platforms, not to mention mash them up, manipulating and re-forming them in a statement of satire, support or dissent.
Food and drink fans are some of the most savvy social media users, active across multimedia platforms such as blogs, microblogs and forums, as well as video, photo and life-streaming sites. When they can browse the 230,955 images in the Flickr Food Porn group or swap how-to recipe videos on ifood.tv, why would they want to spend time on a slickly branded digital silo?
Consumers are the ones creating the most interesting, original and authentic conversation and content about brands. Encouraging independent word of mouth means engaging them on their own terms and in their own venues. That doesn’t mean that brands must accept a chaotic free-for-all with their reputation and image, but it does mean finding personal, positive and relevant ways to encourage collaboration and co-creation.
Virtually every brand will claim in its manifesto that it’s consumer-led, but when faced with walking the talk, they may well pull back and cast around for a quick-win ‘buzz’ around their own ideas and properties.
Word of mouth has become synonymous with social media, and our publicly visible online interactions have allowed word of mouth to be measured, amplified and spread like never before. But brand conversation is, of course, pervasive in our daily offline lives, too. The majority of brand word of mouth is inspired by real, sensual experience, and tasting a cold beer on a hot day still has more visceral impact than seeing a Carling app on an iPhone.
So when engaging with consumers, and starting to build them into a tribe of long-term brand evangelists, it’s essential to take a comprehensive view. In its work for Miele, word of mouth marketing company 1000heads faced the challenge of getting consumers excited about white goods. The strategy was to focus on ways in which Miele is at the heart of our social lives, by facilitating the cooking and cleaning that’s integral to gathering with our families and friends.
By engaging voices highly active across social media food communities in a series of offline events (a VIP blogging trip to the Miele-sponsored Good Food Show; a St Patrick’s Day cooking challenge in the Miele Experience Centre, etc), 1000heads made Miele central to their networking, learning and enjoyment, and demonstrated that the brand wants to listen and learn from them.
The voices went on to share a high volume of positive content from their experiences in the form of videos, photos, blogs and microblogs – content invested with much more emotion than if they had been asked to simply trial a fridge. And they also spread the word to their families at the dinner table, and colleagues at the water cooler, just as they updated their Twitter followers throughout the day.
Although it’s more difficult to measure, word of mouth has influence on our offline lives as consumers on an extremely granular and amorphous level. We’re surrounded by visual cues that influence us and that act as conversational messengers without ever being articulated in words. Imagine seeing your neighbour using a shiny, new barbecue. Be they online or offline, verbal or visual, an awareness of the triggers and behaviours of word of mouth can be used to enhance all elements of a brand’s marketing activity.
Another way that word of mouth goes beyond ‘driving buzz’ is in brand listening. Every good conversation starts with listening, and any company that wants to get involved in consumer conversations needs to understand its existing word of mouth landscape. Who’s talking about the brand, where, and how much?
However, this isn’t just about measuring raw data, but about using the conversations out there to gain real, human insight into the sentiments, intentions and motivations of consumers. The key lies in identifying conversational triggers: what exactly is it about the brand that gets people excited and wanting to share? And how can it therefore become relevant to a broad range of enthusiasms and lives? This begs an entirely different sort of thinking to the marketing staple of packaging a pre-decided ‘brand message’ for the people.
And listening to consumers provides essential feedback as to where internal priorities for change and growth should be. Negative comments uncover urgent and nascent issues, and brands must be prepared to change what they do before they try to change the conversation out there. In this way, word of mouth restores responsibility to brands to respond to what their consumers are saying, yet it also frees them to be more open, playful and vulnerable, letting people share in their story of improvement and change.
So, word of mouth is about transforming within as well as reaching out. If a brand wants to become truly conversational, it needs to consider how every department and activity can incorporate this sociable, experiential approach.
Innocent is a well-known example of a food and beverage brand that has nailed a conversational way of doing things. Its quirky packaging and copy have been almost overshadowed by tales of laid-back conviviality in Innocent Towers; details such as featuring a widget on its website where staff eulogise about their working environment has helped it to win ‘The Best Workplace in the UK’ award. This company isn’t just good at reputation management – it has made conversational value a priority when looking at how it works, as much as what it does.
It may sound radical to brands just starting to dip a toe into the mysterious world of word of mouth, but in order to be fully effective, word of mouth needs to be central to the way a brand approaches its own operations, its attitude to consumers, the development of its products and its portfolio of marketing activity.
It represents a particularly exciting opportunity for this industry, as food and beverage products and services are inherently woven into the fabric of our conversational lives. Word of mouth isn’t a quick fix or an easy solution, and it often requires brands to change the way they work and think, but it actually represents a return to a much more natural, human and measurably fruitful way of approaching commercial hospitality.
**Molly Flatt is word of mouth evangelist for 1000heads, a global specialist in word of mouth marketing. Starting out as a linguist and strategist for the 1000heads creative team, Molly has overseen the creative direction of long-term campaigns for clients such as Nokia, Canon and STA travel. Molly blogs regularly on social media and the arts for The Guardian, The Economist and Finch’s Quarterly Review.**
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