There are a few questions I get asked at every conference and meeting. “How can we prove that WoM works?” and “ WoM is slow isn’t it?”
Lets examine using a recent event ...
“How can we prove that WoM works?”
We’ll how about this as a way of answering ... pitch WoM against a fully funded Ad Campaign professionally run by a big trusted brand with a decent spend against it. If a WoM campaign can stop the campaign in its tracks and get it pulled – surely that is proof that WoM works.
J&J had done all their research – moms often got back pain from carrying their babies. Good creative nicely executed – see it here
BUT, some moms felt that the copy ... “a good kinda pain” and the “makes me look like an official mom” was not to their liking.
So they launched an anti-campaign campaign. No budget – just WoM.
To use the boxing analogy “Seconds out, ding ding, round one” Big brand ad campaign vs a few moms with their noses out of joint about some of the copy.
Well the result is a K.O. J&J had to pull the ad off the air. Their “brand equity”, the efforts of the ad agency, their PR agency, nor the $millions committed to the campaign .. none of that could overpower the effect of the WoM.
Conclusion: a multi-million dollar ad campaign lost out to a WoM campaign.
“ WoM is slow isn’t it?”
48 hours is all it took for the WoM campaign to get the TVC pulled .... I bet it took more than 48 hours to make the TVC .. which looks slow to you?
Read the details here
UPDATE: wow, less than 24hrs later the spoofs appear. This one (about the trend for moms to get fake boobs) has gatherered almost 10,000 views in its first day.
