The Word of Mouth Advocacy: A New Key to Advertising Effectiveness

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Principles of Advertising, ADV 1100

Research Paper on the Word of Mouth Advocacy: A New Key to Advertising Effectiveness

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Eleena Sta Maria J14014195 A1

Submission date: 6th July 2015

Semester: June 2015

Lecturer’s name: Ms. Eizan Azira

Title

Word of Mouth Advocacy: A New Key to Advertising Effectiveness

Author

Ed Keller and Brad Fay

Introduction

        Word of mouth is one of the social marketing methods used to get message across. Social marketing is an in thing at the moment. Marketers are interested in delivering brand-related content that consumers will often share with one another and also to create brand positioning in the eyes of the consumers regarding to the contents of the brand.

        For instance, a popular campaign back in the year 2011, the Old Spice campaign went viral through just word of mouth and then consumers and other people started sharing the video on YouTube and little did we know it blew out of proportion making it the most viral brand of the year (Hallerman, 2010).

        Currently, emphasis are made on sharing whether through YouTube links or sharing commercials via Facebook, hence advertising agencies increasingly are developing the need to share as one of their main objectives. Subjects such as sex appeal, surprise, entertainment and humor are just one of those tools required to motivate sharing among consumers. On the media side of business, agencies are allocating some of their spending to online social networks in the hopes to increase online sharing.

        According to Joe Tripodi, the Coca-Cola Co. Chief marketing officers once said that the trend these days are on expressions rather than impressions. Expressions are important as they reflect active engagement with the content of the product while impressions are just exposure to the content and rather passive. Consumer engagement with the brands is ultimately what they are striving for and to achieve (Tripodi, 2011).

Purpose

        The purpose of this research paper is to identify the power of word of mouth in the advertising and marketing field. The expressions made by consumers are high in value and is something worth digging deeper and to study them. Often, they must be able to recognize that expressions occurs most often face to face or voice to voice rather than online. To rely only on digital perspective would limit the impact of the overall marketing effort and undermines the true power of word of mouth (Bughin, Doogan and Vetvik, 2010).