Shalini Kumari, MICA

Word of mouth: Double-edged sword

“It is an awesome movie…Hrithik is in his best form and so is Ash…the script is wonderful man! You must watch it!” Ever heard such a description from any of your friends? It so obviously compels you to go and watch the movie as soon as possible.

So, what do you think? To start anew, human-beings have always had the highest credibility and more so if they are our close friends or relatives. Right from our childhood, we take recommendations from the ‘experienced hat’ in terms of taking admission to school/colleges or taking up a job. It is just too obvious that the same is followed when it comes to purchasing a product.
Tracing the history, we immortals have always been good at spreading the word across. Right from the time when paper was not invented, the teachers used to lend their learnings based on memory to their disciples and it used to pass on like this from generation to generation until we stepped upon writing. Similarly the ‘bed-time stories’ about the older India and its myths by our grandparents had the same effect until we grew up enough to question it.

What enhances the credibility of WoM is the personal touch associated with it. The fact that we could not identify any ulterior motive on the part of the ‘teller’ generates a natural buzz about it. We learn from other’s experiences. We identify ourselves with other people and decide based on the experiences of the other person.

It is discovered in a survey that India (87%) holds the 4th position in trusting other’s advice over any other advertising tool with Hong-Kong (93%) leading the list. This very well reflects the natural trust we Indians entrust on others.

Next comes the question of harnessing the power of WoM in an era of more awareness, information and inquisitive customers where there are several channels of information available to them. How does one go about it as a marketer? The first and foremost important thing about WoM is to be honest. It does not take long for the customer to find out the truth and when it does there is no quicker way to destroy a brand than negative word of mouth. Hence, negative word of mouth can be extremely detrimental to any product .This is the other side of the coin or the other edge of the sword.

We hear it all the time that “word-of-mouth marketing is the best marketing because it comes with credibility and it costs you nothing”. Here I would like to differ a little because I believe that WoM is not just something that is reserved for marketing and communication folks. It is constituted outside of a formalized setting. It does not need any kind of marketing strategy but yes, we do need to plan for how to generate WoM buzz for our product/service.

The most important thing is to have a compelling unique selling proposition to enable a person to tell their friends about it. This constitutes the first step towards generating WoM. It often helps to introduce elements of surprise in form of unexpected freebies to get attention or stimulate customers to get talking about your brand. Do what others don’t. That’s an easy way to surprise people and win attention. Let others set the tone and you be the first one to disrupt it by being different. Hot Chips serves as a very good example of positive WoM.

It's no longer just one neighbor complaining to another about a bad experience he had with his car --- it’s a blogger relating his complaint to millions of people around the world. And what he says has permanence on the Web, unlike a passing comment made over the backyard fence. A review on Amazon.com or a strategically placed blog posting now has the power to radiate to more viewers than a primetime TV ad and be perceived to have more credibility.

Truly said that a successful marketer is one who has seen both the sides of the double-edged sword (WoM) and knows how to deal with it in a manner which is beneficial to him so as to avoid the other edge coming down his throat!