Word of Mouth in Marketing
Word of mouth in marketing is perhaps the most potent type of recommendation there is. Someone talking to someone else about your product is invaluable- and the rise of social media is only making those kind of conversations more frequent, and searchable. New word of mouth marketing campaigns from Coke and Pepsi underscore the rising importance of social media and word of mouth marketing overall.
Word of Mouth in Marketing: Coke and Pepsi
The soft drink giants have long engaged in a battle for carbonated supremacy, and 2010 sees them looking to utilize social media to create word of mouth. Here’s what they are doing:
Word of mouth in marketing at Coke:
1. Coke has a massive campaign going on built around the Open Happiness theme. It’s a gigantic branding exercise, associating Coke with happiness and fun. And they are going about it primarily on social media, eschewing both classic TV ads and even their corporate website.
2. Expedition 206: Coke held a social media-based tryout competition for 3 Happiness ambassadors. Those ambassadors are now traveling to 206 countries around the world in one year, documenting their travels along the way in a variety of social media ways.
3. Happiness Machine: Coke took a great guerrilla publicity stunt at a college cafeteria, made an entertaining video, and have garnered well over 1 million views on YouTube in just a few weeks. This is the ideal example of combining social media with word of mouth in marketing.
Word of Mouth in Markeitng at Pepsi:
1. Foursquare! Pepsi sponsored the New York City Foursquare leaderboard, donating $1 for every “check in” point to CampInteractive, an outdoors program for urban youth. The campaign is right at the cutting edge and has generated serious word of mouth in marketing circles about how best to utilize geolocation in microblogging.
2. Social Media over Super Bowl: Pepsi has always been able to make an ad that gets people talking- Remember the Cindy Crawford ads? But this year they are ditching the Super Bowl altogether and investing the money in cause-related marketing through social media in order to generate word of mouth buzz. Beautiful.
3. Pepsi Refresh: The entire social media campaign that Pepsi is pursuing is collectively called Pepsi Refresh. Essentially they are holding online voting where people across the country can vote for their favorite charities, and in the end Pepsi will award money based on those votes. Just think of the word of mouth in marketing you generate by giving away millions of dollars…
Word of Mouth in marketing through social media is taking big soda by storm. With two global giants like this shifting from television and the Super Bowl to social media and the extended word of mouth that social media creatively inspires.
Scott
