Observable WOM

John Tylee reports in last week's Campaign (subscription required) on a speech given by Peter Friedman, CEO of LiveWorld, an online customer community and social networking agency. Friedman suggests looking to the past and considering how brands found fame before advertising really took off: Through word of mouth. The Internet, specifically online communities, is now allowing that to happen again. Advertisers beware he warns – the rules of the game are changing. Of course word of mouth has always been the most effective form of marketing and satisfied customers have always been the best advertisement. What the Internet is now doing is boosting the reach and longevity of consumer opinions. To paraphrase Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, authors of business-blogging book Naked Conversations, what we are now witnessing is “word of mouth on steroids”. But is a recommendation from an unknown blogger online really as effective as one coming from an offline acquaintance? Is word of mouth online really the same as word of mouth offline? All our work with consumers around the world indicates that they would still rather follow a recommendation from an offline acquaintance than the opinion of somebody they've read on a website. Of course, on the other hand, opinions recorded on blogs or sites like Amazon have a global reach. Unlike offline conversations, which continue their existence only in the minds of those directly involved, online conversations can theoretically exist forever. All anybody needs to find them is a search engine and a few relevant terms. It is this that makes online word of mouth so powerful. It is far-reaching and it has permanence. It is this feature of online conversations that is getting brands to notice - they are observable and measurable. As more consumers switch to search engines and the internet as a source of information, they are likely to hear what has been said, good or bad. But I suspect the jury's still out as to the exact future role of online WOM - how far is the democratisation of the business/net world really going to go? What will be the role of online pundits vs communities and how are either of them going to interact with offline word-of-mouth? Can anyone really know at this stage?