By Patrick McCarthy, Social Media Coordinator & Blog Editor, WOMMA

Word of mouth is generated by many different sources and an effective WOM campaign should reflect that. Every facet of the endeavor needs to spark a conversation. Affect, a NY-based PR firm, produced an online contest earlier this year that did just that.

Like most PR firms, they needed a summer intern. Obtaining one is usually a banal repeat of career fairs, job postings, resume filtering and interviews. But Affect needed a really good intern and saw an opportunity to generate a flood of word of mouth in the process of finding one.

“Finding an intern was just one of the goals, but we really designed the program around other goals like raising awareness, building a use case for best practices that we could share with existing clients.” – Sandra Fathi, President, Affect

Every Step is a WOM Opportunity

Word of mouth starts with one really good product or idea and is successful through superb execution of the details. The contest broke the schema of how to find an intern, but that isn’t what made this campaign successful.

The contest was designed with three stages. The first stage required applicants to submit their pitch for hiring them. To make it to the next stage, applicants needed to get votes. This meant that they needed to persuade people to vote for them. Ample sharing ensued. The top six vote-getters made it to the next round.

Stage two brought in the big guns to pare down the six entries to three killer finalists. The judges were:

Guy Kawasaki, Partner, Garage Technology Ventures & Co-Founder, Alltop

“ I want to see that you understand what the company does, because you did your homework. If you don’t demonstrate that you prepared, don’t even bother applying to a contest that I’m judging.”

Erica Swallow, Associate Editor, Mashable

“The ideal candidate would be a creative thinker with influence in his or her interest areas, whether that’s through a blog, social channels or even a Meetup or club.”

Jessica Dickler, Staff Writer, CNN Money

“I’m looking for someone who is personable and smart. From my perspective, being easy to talk to and quick to deliver results goes a long way.”

These big name judges lent a lot of validity and prestige to the contest, which in turn generated even more WOM. By the time the contest reached the third stage, conversations were growing in college cafeterias as much as in media professional circles.

Sandra and Leslie Campisi, VP and Partner at Affect, finally whittled the three finalists down to one lucky fellow, Pat Gotham of Salisbury University. He’ll keep the fire alive by blogging his entire experience.

The New York Internship Project by the Numbers

In the end, the campaign worked. They had 96 potential interns who in total generated 165 comments and 14,360 votes. Pat Gotham alone received 45 comments and 795 votes.

Affect.com saw a 60% increase in traffic and a 56% increase in page views. Their blog, Tech Affect, drew 46% more traffic and 50% more page views. The contest website drew 63,492 visits and 109,371 total views.

The story was picked up by Forbes, Crain’s New York, Yahoo! Finance, The Wall Street Journal, and PR Breakfast Club.

Very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the “Selling Power of Friendship.” The article outlines how Facebook intends to boost revenue by selling targeted and personalized ads based upon the voluminous data it has collected on the likes and Facebook activity of its users. It’s called “Social Context Advertising.”

For example, when Facebook users “like” an ad, Facebook could feature the names of your friends who have indicated they “like” the ad/brand somewhere in the design of the ad.

Shiv Singh, notable social media researcher/practitioner, says, “The social ads are interesting, because you feel that you are connecting to a brand through an endorsement from someone.”

It’s clear from Sheryl Sandberg’s quote that Facebook understands the power word-of-mouth has in improving the effectiveness of marketing.

However, Augie Ray from Forrester brings up a good point about the value of a Facebook fan. Augie says “there is no intrinsic value to a Facebook fan” that is “… until the brand does something to create value with Facebook fans.”

Marketers must not confuse “liking” a brand with “championing” and “advocating” a brand. It’s simple and quick for a person to click a button indicating they “like” a brand. But is it truly meaningful?

Word of mouth takes on a whole different meaning when a person goes out of their way to share their appreciation for a brand by talking about it over happy hour drinks with co-workers, during a dinner get-together with neighbors, and on the phone with a good friend. That’s the true selling power of friendship!

Recently I spoke with Jay Ehret, small business marketing pro with The Marketing Spot about how everything Word of Mouth has become online Social Media-centric. That was the starting point of our discussion. We covered lots of other territory. Paul Williams from the Idea Sandbox added in another perspective on the podcast.

One question Jay asked me was:
Is WOM diminished as a marketing discipline?

My reply:
“Absolutely not. A word of mouth recommendation from a friend or an acquaintance is and will always be trusted more than traditional advertising. Friends trust what friends say more than people trust what companies say. That isn’t going to change.

As a marketing discipline, WOM is now more important than ever because we have so many ways to connect with people besides a phone call or a face-to-face visit. Being able to have a conversation with someone using computers and smart phones increases the opportunity for WOM to happen.

>>> Have a listen to the podcast <<<.

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Key quotes from the podcast include:
“In the past, we just felt word of mouth would happen serendipitously…We’ve now learned through The Tipping Point…more people are trying to think about getting people to talk, not serendipitously, but strategically.” | John Moore

“The key of it is, people passing the word about you. …It just boils down to ‘what does it mean to be remarkable?’ So remarkable, that people remark.” | Paul Williams

“My advice is to be 100% confident in how you deliver a customer experience before you start to try to strike up conversations online. Because if you are not confident, you will not want to listen to some of the negative feedback online about how you are doing business.” | John Moore

“Word of mouth, to do it properly, it’s not just a department head; it’s not just one person. It’s the way you run a company.” | Paul Williams

“It doesn’t matter how many fans you have online. But we get caught up in that as a measurement of success, and frankly the real measure of success is; is a company making money. Are they turning conversations into transactions?” | John Moore

“I sort of see word of mouth as how do companies, and businesses and people give a script to the people who might talk about you. That way you can guide the discussion. So, ‘how can I give you bullet points to talk about my brand?’” | Paul Williams

MINI COOPER gets it. They know how to use advertising to spark conversations. In Amsterdam, MINI’s ad agency created an outdoor campaign that managed to break through the holiday advertising clutter.

This is old school offline WOM that spreads online as well. You may have already seen this passed around over email or twitter. On the MarketingProf’s DailyFix blog, Paul Williams breaks down the marketing strategy behind creating advertising that is worthy of WOM by being:

Read Paul’s excellent breakdown of MINI’s WOM-worthy advertising.