The 360 Digital Influence strategic approach to Word of Mouth Marketing was 1 of 3 innovations highlighted in the keynote address given by advertising legend/Ogilvy Vice Chair Steve Hayden.  Fear, love and advertising was the title of the presentation and the theme that carried throughout the 3 features.  The Fear & Love statements for what we do at 360 DI were the same: The consumer is in control.  This inspires both fear and love, but new innovations in technology and approach make it possible to succeed in the new world order.

If you aren’t familiar with Steve Hayden, I wont bore you with his long resume, but the single piece of trivia that drove fear and love in my soul was learning he was the creative force behind Apple’s 1984 ad. 

If the main speaker didn’t raise the stakes enough, the fact that I was presenting a strategic approach after 2 highly technical whiz-bang demos did.  Shockingly enough, however, in a crowd full of tech folks, a strategic approach on how to employ all of these wonderful new technologies to move business results is and innovation and sparked a lot of great follow on discussions.

I demonstrated our approach through telling a story about Ford that carried from the Listening and insights gathering stage through Planningand influencer identification through Engagement and Measurement.  In the listening stage, I featured an image generated by Crimson Hexagon’s VoxTrot tool showing how conversation topics surrounding auto purchase cluster naturally:

Crimson Hexagon Auto Conversation

From there, we moved into Planning and I showed a live demo from our friends at Linkfluence on how conversations among auto purchase influencers can spread.  I can’t embed the full demo, but here’s a screenshot demonstrating the influence of a post on treehugger about green technology.

Technology has allowed the practice of Word of Mouth Marketing and employing social media to move from a pilot-based throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what stocks. to become truly strategic communications.  Hopefully this shift will give it the credibility necessary for companies to be able to rethink the way they interact with customers to make sure the give and take can be truly meaningful.