Author: virginia.miracle

I am a passionate Word of Mouth Marketing practitioner. The juxtaposition of my experiences in WOMM vs. my time in the trenches of one of the country’s most voluminous direct marketers has given me firsthand understanding of the power of customer conversation and the relative inefficiency of shout and interruption marketing. Currently, I am the Director of Word of Mouth Marketing at Brains on Fire, a national Identity and Word of Mouth marketing company. There, I champion the client services group and intimately shepherded the Fiskateers crafting ambassador program for the first 18 months of its existence. Brains on Fire is a supremely creative and intuitive company. If you ever are in search of examples for how to make every customer touchpoint express your true personality, try calling the Brains on Fire front desk. I was first turned on to the power of conversational marketing through a role I was asked to tackle during my 4 years at Dell, Inc. in Round Rock Texas. I began my time there in Corporate Strategy and rolled through various roles in consumer marketing including word of mouth marketing manager (believed to be the first WOMM title at a F50 company) and leading the company’s online advertising to consumers and small businesses. Before that, I was a proud member of the late-90s phenomenon Trilogy Software and earned a BA in English language and literature from Princeton. I am a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Board of Directors. I am also a new mom, a mean Scrabble player, and a (formerly closeted) Bruce Hornsby superfan. I recently completed GH3 for Wii on Medium, but secretly doubt if I’m going to get good enough to go through it on Hard. I’m not sure how many more times I can listen to Metallica’s “One”, anyway.
Hornsby Shares Clutter-Free Holiday Gift

Hornsby Shares Clutter-Free Holiday Gift

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When I say I am a Bruce Hornsby fan, I do not say so lightly. I have been a fan for more than half of my years on this earth and, because of the web bringing niche audiences together, there has never been a better time to be a fanatic. The live shows will make you a convert – there is never a setlist, always improvisation, and songs from the BH catalog get sewn into the Dead, classical, bluegrass, and folk – no 2 shows are the same. Like most jam band followers, Bruce fans are hungry for news of setlists and live recordings. I frequently visit the definitive fan site and, less frequently, check his official site.

Bruce Christmass GreetingThe holiday update of the official site is indeed worthwhile. Instead of just writing a holiday greeting to fans (in fact the photo in the greeting is laughably bad with lots of closed eyes), Bruce & his band gave fans what they really want – a collection of live tracks from the summer 2007 shows that are downloadable FOR FREE for a limited time. Bruce makes a few live shows available for purchase each year at Bruce Hornsby Live, but surprising diehards with free tracks recognizes that we’re in it for the music and will keep us engaged in the long droughts between live experiences. My guess is that this will also get some folks thinking about buying even more.

If you haven’t heard a Bruce track since “The Way It Is”, download Disc 1, Part 2 and check out “Gonna Be Some Changes Made”, or Disc 2, Part 1’s “Fortunate Son -> Comfortably Numb”.

High End Hotels Reward with Experiences, not Clutter

High End Hotels Reward with Experiences, not Clutter

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Travolta StarwoodThe Wall Street Journal recently featured a story about a California couple who traded in a whopping 124,000 Starwood Preferred points for the chance to accompany John Travolta to the premiere of Hairspray in New York. While not exactly my cup of tea, I can only imagine how much these folks are enjoying sharing stories and pictures from this experience (and how thrilled Starwood must be for the WSJ placement). Creating conversational capital for your customers is a high ROI investment.

At the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas, Marc Priut, in speaking about his personal experiences spending his vacation following the band Sister Hazel, captured this phenomenon as “People don’t really want ‘things’ anymore. They want to ‘do.’” While all hotels provide a bed and shelter, hotels that inspire loyalty are the ones who provide experiences worth retelling. Sending top customers to a movie premiere definitely fits the “do” bill. At the beginning of the year, I wrote about Kimpton Hotels going above and beyond to solicit feedback and then shocking me by actually engaging in the specifics of my feedback. Kimpton never disappoints in providing me with a great experience in the moment and a great story to retell.

As with most business travelers, I don’t want to be rewarded with a t-shirt or other marketing clutter, but if you leave a copy of the New Yorker on the coffee table, remember me by name, or bring a goldfish to my room, I will remember that and tell someone. I have purchased a night at Kimpton’s Hotel Monaco in DC as a gift for my father’s birthday on Thursday. It is my hope that while he is extremely hard to buy for in terms of “things”, this might start a tradition of cutting the clutter in my own life and providing family and friends with the gift of remarkable experiences instead.

Deep Doughnut Thoughts

Deep Doughnut Thoughts

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If there was a single venue that offered Dunkin Donuts’ delicious coffee and Krispy Kreme’s delectable doughnuts, I would weigh 300 lbs and be wired all the time.

This seems like a seamless integration of strengths and something that would make me a lot happier than XM+Sirius.