Author Archives: 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.

RL’s Clutter-Free Olympic Email

I guess I always receive the Ralph Lauren e-newsletter, but I never really notice it. Until today. How is this for an elegant & timely promotion of your Olympic integration?
The time stamp was within 8 hours of both the actual opening ceremonies and the US rebroadcast tonight. The callout [...]

Lessons from PR Week

I was lucky enough to talk to Tanya Lewis from PR Week a few weeks ago and to have my headshot and a few paragraphs appear in this week’s PR Week. The article profiles 4 “creatives” promoting greater understanding of social media in PR. Because of the Aug 4 timing, I was very [...]

Presidential “Word Cloud” in Print WashPo

Today’s Sunday Washington Post features a comparison of the “word clouds” created by John McCain and Barack Obama’s respective blogs. The immediate point is that Obama is the biggest topic for both blogs, but that’s not why I care. We know that reporters use blogs for story ideas and leads on quotes, but [...]

Tom’s Walks the WOM

Ben at Church of the Customer and John at Brand Autopsy have kindly shared the remarkable story of Tom’s Shoes. In a nutshell:
Strategy: Passion + a Simple Mission
For every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. One for One

Advertising Budget: $0. To quote the [...]

Noise Counter Cuts Marketing Clutter

PSFK featured a set of European billboards that display live readings of the noise level in the locations where they are posted. I guess we have become to immune to irrelevant clutter - both visual and auditory - that we now need a billboard to remind us of the decibel level and the value [...]