By Rod Brooks, WOMMA Board President & CMO of PEMCO Insurance

The rules of the game have changed. No longer is consumer behavior driven exclusively by traditional marketing and advertising. Today those consumers are making purchasing decisions after hearing the opinions of peers, friends, and even strangers. And most often, those influencers make their opinions known online.

Many smart companies get this, and are taking steps to harness this new venue. Others, regrettably, are still learning the tough lessons of how the game has changed.

Those who are reaping the benefits of these online conversations have made the decision to take the time and dedicate the resources to create long-term relationships with consumers by consistently listening, responding, and joining conversations. Now, smart enterprises are going a step further, giving employees the knowledge of where these conversations are taking place, and the tools and the confidence to join in. These organizations have recognized that engaging with customers in these conversations can be a tremendous equalizer, allowing nimble, adaptive companies to compete on par with much bigger, better funded competitors.

This is the exact experience we have in our organization. PEMCO is a small regional insurance company, and we face national insurance giants spending billions on advertising annually. To break through this advertising assault, we have needed to embrace an engagement strategy that sets us apart from national competitors. We are focused on the voice of the customer, and we’ve decided to spur brand conversations in unexpected ways.

For PEMCO Insurance, the solution was to differentiate ourselves in our ability to connect with consumers on a local level. Our message was simple: we’re different because we live, work, learn and play in the same communities as our customers and understand their needs first-hand.

We created an ad campaign based on this message, celebrating our quirks and shared values here in the Pacific Northwest. The campaign provided entry into both online and offline conversations on topics that matter to our customers – community, local issues, and sometimes even insurance.

As luck would have it, I discovered the annual WOMMA Summit at about the same time that PEMCO’s new “hyper local” campaign was coming to fruition in 2007. Our company was founded on the premise that we differentiate ourselves by enthusiastically embracing the relationship we have with our customers. The “voice of the customer” is so important to us that we are willing to reorganize around their voice and pay specific attention to each and every touch point.

As a self-proclaimed student of WOM, I soaked up everything WOMMA had to offer. I became the “maverick” in our organization and chose to be proactive in our assessment and approach. I found it very useful to encourage our marketing partners (agencies) to become WOMMA members and to take advantage of the information and connections that WOMMA offers.

Together, we spent almost a year identifying relevant online conversations and listening to what customers had to say. We studied other companies’ experiences and brought in a partner dedicated to helping us find ways to use new social media channels in our day-to-day business. Creating “employee readiness” was a key feature of that plan.

We established our own set of social media guidelines to fit our culture and goals. By collaborating with Legal, Human Resources, and Information Security groups, we were able to knock down departmental barriers and roadblocks while converting our skeptics to advocates through the process.

Next, we developed a series of social media boot camps to increase familiarity and comfort with social media applications enterprise-wide. We bolstered our preparation for the training by enrolling our marketing team in WOMMA’s seven-week WOM-COMM 101 certificate program. With the shared vision of rallying around the voice of the customer, we armed employees with the knowledge and tools to meet customer needs in the social space.

Internally, community-building tools like Yammer began with a small pilot group but snowballed organically as employees rushed to get on board. Externally, customer story-sharing tools like Ratings and Reviews provided back office employees direct access to the voice of the customer. For us, these tools have buttressed our customer focus by facilitating receiving, sharing, and heeding customer sentiment across the organization.

Finally, social media leadership summits disseminated ownership of social engagement. Disparate departments convened to discuss the progress of our shared vision and managers were challenged to consider how social media may serve their business purpose.

And we’re not done yet. Our next steps include supporting pilots in customer-facing departments, reviewing and updating our social media guidelines, and offering social media classes through our in-house learning center. The goal is to weave social media into our customer service toolkit – ideally, these online tools will be as familiar as the telephone at every employee’s desk.

We’ve come a long way in equipping our organization with the tools necessary to serve and compete in a virtual world, yet like most journeys, ours is far from finished. By rallying around a shared vision, fostering a social-savvy workforce, and meeting customers on their terms, we can deliver unsurpassed customer service in a marketplace where the rules – and the conversation – are continually changing.

Being a member of WOMMA has made our journey much easier. WOMMA has given PEMCO access to strategic thinkers, experienced practitioners, and incredibly valuable colleagues on the front lines of customer engagement. Our WOMMA membership has been incredibly valuable.

As the 2011 WOMMA Board President, I’m excited by the goals we have established for the coming year.

• We’ll continue to differentiate ourselves from other organizations through our increasing focus on advocacy for the discipline of credible word-of-mouth marketing, both online and offline.
• We’ll strengthen our ethics code, our role with the Federal Trade Commission, and our continually improving research and educational resources for members.
• We’ll strive to increasingly serve the entirety of our member’s WOM needs throughout their business: Customer Service, Legal, HR, Product Development, and of course, Marketing and PR.
• We’re committed to seeking new and valuable ways to increase the ROI on the membership investments we all make.
• We’ll do more to bring the WOMMA experience to your marketplace – a particular interest of mine. In 2011, WOMMA will host regional events that enable us to share our story with communities of members and potential members where they live, work, learn, and TALK.

If you find your organization struggling on the traditional media battlefield, and like PEMCO you would like to be prepared with new ammunition, I’d like to encourage you to join WOMMA right away. I can say with confidence that it has made a difference. I believe that WOMMA can help you too!

Beloved brands have it easier with word of mouth. Why? Brands that are beloved by people get discussed freely and widely. Apple, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Twitter, and many other brands get talked about because there is something intrinsically interesting about them. In other words, beloved brands are far from being boring.

Unfortunately, most brands fall into being “boring” and not beloved.

During a WOMMA Brands Council Webinar yesterday (audio available here), Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research Analyst and author of Groundswell, gave some advice on how boring brands get tap into word of mouth conversations.

Bernoff recommends boring brands encourage people to talk, even if it isn’t about the boring brand itself. Bernoff calls this strategy Borrowed Relevance. By borrowing something relevant to people, like a topic or an issue, and encouraging conversations about that relevant topic, boring brands can become a part of the conversation.

American Express practices “Borrowed Relevance” with their OPEN FORUM blog community. As a brand, there isn’t much remarkable about American Express to spark conversations. However, by bringing together a group of business experts sharing actionable advice in an on-going series of blog posts, American Express effectively taps into the interests and needs of its small business card holders. This is “Borrowed Relevance” at work.

Similar advice is given by Alexandra Samuel. In a Harvard Business article, Alexandra talks about how commonplace brands can use the marketing strategy of “Reflected Glory” to get customers talking. According to Alexandra, Reflected Glory Marketing (RGM) is about finding, “…something your customers do care passionately about - something that reflects thematically and positively on your brand - and invite customers into that conversation.”

She cites Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project as prime examples of RGM.

Alexandra sums up the power of Reflected Glory Marketing by writing …

“When your company digs deep to find the resonant themes that connect you with your customers, you are reconnecting to your most profound strengths, and to the essence of your brand. By surfacing those strengths in the social context of the Internet, you’re able to reinterpret, re-envision and even re-engineer your core value proposition. In partnership with your customers, and using emergent social media platforms, you may find new ways of translating what makes you great into great products, services or value.”

Yep, I’m putting my marketing where my mouth is as WOMMA’s in-house evangelist for all things word-of-mouth (WOM).

In this role, I will help WOMMA better communicate with its members and non-members to promote the discipline of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. I’ll also serve as a WOMMA spokesperson addressing hot-button topics covered by traditional media and discussed in conversations happening in the online social media world.  Plus, I’ll be sharing thoughts here … on the ALL THINGS WOM blog.

Those who know me, know I’ve long believed in the power of WOM to increase business sales and brand salience.  Can’t help being a believer. I’ve spent a good part of my marketing career working for two brands that baked word-of-mouth marketing principles into how it does business every day. Starbucks Coffee and Whole Foods Market both became endearing and enduring brands because they each delivered products, services, and experiences customers wanted to enthusiastically share with others.

That’s WOM in action … when people so adore something a company does that they share stories with friends/family in the offline world and with followers/fans in the online world. 

Today, companies like Zappos, Method, Apple, Lego, Fiskars, and Rackspace are all proudly flying the WOM flag high and finding success through tapping into the influential power of customers.

As a marketingologist with my Brand Autopsy consulting business, I show companies how to use basic WOM principles to turn indifferent customers into evangelical customers. When I began my practice in early 2005, one of the first steps I took was to join the just-started Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). And if you attended the first WOMMA Conference in March 2005, you probably saw me.  (I was the dude in the white smock.)

So it feels natural for me to work directly with WOMMA as their “WOM Enthusiast.”  

You’ll be hearing more from me, especially on this blog.  Together, we’ll explore the arts and sciences of WOM that sales (and fails), wrestle with ethics issues, and showcase smart analysis from bloggers about all things WOM.

 Thanks for joining me. This’ll be fun.