Cooking Up a Word Of Mouth Marketing Campaign, adTech NYC Style!

What are the viral intracacies of generating word of mouth marketing campaigns? Well my first session of the day on Tuesday at adTech NYC would provide some unqiue insight into actual campaigns, techniques and ingredients used to brew up some successful results.

First up was the brand manager at Philips, who leaned on viral marketing for the Philips Norelco.

His goal: Generate awareness and involvment with the brand
His tactics: Developed a microsite to support campaign
His challenges: It was a new product concept with a limited budget: sub $1M (oh darn, that’s a tough one. Somehow the smaller agency/client reading this doesn’t feel so bad.)
Not only was the budget around $1M, but it was supported by big agencies: BBDO and Carat Fusion. That means plenty of resources and enough budget to have someone caring for this campaign everyday.
Shareverywhere.com was born. It features streaming video. There were very successful results and feedback. It won AdAges global campaign of the year.
It also was integrated into Howard Stern’s skit and featured in over five hundered blogs with positive feedback.

In the end, they took a direct approach with audience on a sensitive topic. Consumer research was the foundation of the exceution with testing, testing, testing. The question I typed during the session was the following: Does it require a big brand to launch these types of campaigns that already has some penetration into the online sector?

Next up was Jason from digitaria (local San Diego agency)
He is from taylor_made adidas< background

He create a phased campaign with multiple elements to support taylor made golf balls. Then showed communication phases using excel spreadsheet, simlair to a media plan. Next they started viral communication by spilling to bloggers. This created a UGC (user generated content) aspect via the golf bloggers, who were creating podcasts for the site. Next they got products into the hand of the influencers (sent magazine with two ball sample insert) Used print collateral. As the initial launch was viral, they launched the full campaign to the public. They launched flash section of the taylor made site and used banner ads on pgatour.com. But there were no traffic numbers to show. I noted the following during the session: (kind if lame)

Next up was Gary Spangler, eBusiness Leader at Dupont. He also is the thought leader at dupont for seo, email and social media. Also Gary is better known as the “guy in the striped shirts.” This is a personal wom campaign.

Gary discussed the biz to biz marketing opportunity. He used census.gov as his source to support his findings. By leveraging the success of product, he was able to engage Dupont in some social media marketing for manufatucring vertical. In this vertical there is a long buying cycle with influencers and decision makers. So in order to market to businesses, he decided to use case studies with application profiles.

So what was the next step in Gary’s campaign?

He wanted to know what they were doing!
Monitor online conversations.
Tune content to consumer”s feedback.
SEM initiatives through keywords.
Offer opt_in via rss and email.
Direct advertising to influencers.
Recommends blog with care. Gary states he “backs the wom standards, ethics, etc.”

He then explains how to start a campaign:
Maintain control. Dont fully give control to your agency and pilot ideas online. He mentions, “things go wrong when you try to be too creative, listen to your consumers.”

Another interesting session with some good examples, but lacking in the things that are truly innovative and cutting edge. Maybe it’s just the type of clients that don’t warrant a social media marketing plus tagging campaign.