Tim Palmer (pictured) explains how to conduct a successful Word Of Mouth campaign.

Let’s be clear from the start. Word of Mouth (WOM) is not a ‘digital thing’ and is not new. WOM is the original and purest form of marketing.

When it comes to advice,   we listen to who we trust. We don’t completely trust advertising when it comes to purchasing decisions. I’m not saying advertising doesn’t work – advertising sparks interest and raises awareness. But, as consumers, however, we are not so gullible as to base large financial outlays or behavioural change on advertising alone.

We are savvy, we go to our trusted sources and see what they think, just like we always did – before advertising and digital – be they our friends and family, acquaintances, independent consumer reviews, or anyone else with an opinion.

Digital has changed the face of direct marketing because it has provided a non-geographic, universally accessible platform from which consumers can source independent trusted information on any given brand for themselves.

It is live and constantly evolving. The Internet is where we connect with our real-world mates, our Facebook friends, our family or even for just eavesdropping on other people’s exchanges via Twitter, forums, messenger services, blogs and so on.

Live conversations are the single most powerful source of data in the world. Clever brands have already tapped into those conversations to learn more about themselves and their customers.

They have then engaged in conversations, because building a relationship generates business – it’s a no-brainer!

But if brands want consumers to have a conversation with other consumers about them – a positive conversation – the best way is to initiate that is to lead it and nurture it.

But how do we start those conversations?

What is the perfect ice-breaker?

And will it lead to sales?

Well, as always, the answer is not clear-cut. It is important at the beginning of a WOM campaign that the objectives are clear: Is it for a brand awareness drive? Is it a sales push? A crisis management issue? Purely a customer service initiative? Or a combination of everything?

Consumers rule

Many brands are scared of WOM and social media, because they relinquish every control they have ever known in traditional marketing. Consumers rule, and vocally. Domino’s Pizza in America was publically criticised by customers in a research group, where they slated one of their pizzas. One pizza enthusiast in particular, called Adrien, was very damning. Rather than sweeping the research group’s findings under the carpet, Domino’s took the modern social media and WOM attitude of being completely open about it. Domino’s reworked the recipe, rebuilt the pizza, filming the process, including all the human stories along the way and then took the pizza back to Adrien and asked for her opinion.

This extreme customer service response garnered huge WOM coverage in America across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, improving their brand perception, product and sales. (Search: Domino’s Pizza Turnaround.)

In 2009, we were tasked by Nokia to get people talking about seven short films made by TED Fellows (from the Technology, Entertainment, Design Talks programme), responding to topical issues they felt strongly about.

We engaged bloggers, and gave them exclusive content and tools to empower that content.

We gave brand advocates the tools to proliferate the films widely and fed stories out through Twitter ‘twibbons’ (avatar stamps). Plus, we developed Facebook games around the themes explored in the short films.

By empowering the brand champions, providing dialogue collateral and leveraging every technique available across the WOM landscape, we captured the prized middle-ground consumer by engaging them in positive Nokia-related conversations. (Search: Nokia Responsiveness.)

Similarly, Fun Theory is an initiative by Volkswagen to discover the influence of play in changing of people’s behaviour. The campaign was a Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year, with engagement in the films produced by VW coming in at around 17 million views on YouTube. A competition to encourage other people to think the VW way and ultimately a successful branding piece for VW without a single product involved. Will this lead to sales? Again, as people’s conversations about the brand are positive conversations, when we as consumers go to research our financial outlay and behavioural change decisions, these positive conversations will play a part in us wanting to be part of that brand story. (Search: Fun Theory.)

Examine objectives

However, successes don’t    mean that WOM and social media should be just automatically adopted by all brands. There have been numerous failures too. Brands should carefully examine their objectives and decide whether they should even have a place in social media.

No-one likes a gate-crasher! Brands should carefully consider their tone if they decide to get involved. Control is an illusion, brands don’t make the rules– the consumers are in charge and resistance is futile!

Brands must co-operate or accept severe backlash. (Search: Nestlé Facebook Palm Oil.) Brands have always valued and appreciated the power of WOM on sales.

The key now is harnessing the power online, whether playing the entertaining host or blending seamlessly into the landscape to build relationships with the consumer, be it through 140 characters, video channels, images or geo-cached information.

All these methods have quickly become second nature to the 1.75 billion Internet users worldwide. Traditional concepts of direct marketing have been exploded with this advent of instant mass consumer conversation, transcending all geography and removing all traditional controls.

Like the Internet, direct marketing is everywhere.

Tim Palmer is digital creative director, Inferno. Email: Tim.p@inferno-group.com