Been busy with a bunch of exciting projects these past two weeks. Combine that with being a bit burned out and prepping for some travel and you get no blogging. Perhaps tomorrow night's dinner with Ike Piggot will trigger something.

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The Sun 'n Fun Fly-In wraps up tomorrow in Lakeland, FL. Always eager to play around with the camera I made two visits to check out the hardware and snap a bunch of photos. If you're an aviation geek there is no better place than a fly-in. There was plenty of military gear around, including: F-14, F-18's, F-16's, C-130, KC-135, A-10's.

You can check out the entire Sun 'n Fun photoset on Flickr.

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Early last week I was in New Orleans for a conference. When I arrived on Monday I spent most of the afternoon walking around the French Quarter taking photos. New Orleans has its fair share of street artists. I categorize them into two groups, passive and active.

Here are two examples below. On the left is an 'active' type who was singing outside Cafe Du Monde. He and his partner were doing an amazing job. On the right is a 'passive' type. This pixie statue just stood there motionless. However, if you put some change in her basket she would spring to life and twinkle you with pixie dust.

New Orleans is an eclectic town.

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This is an interesting twist on old-meda/new-media. Former Tampa Tribune film critic Bob Ross (he was laid off in the recent downsizing at the Tribune) is now blogging at Sticks of Fire, the Tampa Blog.

After nearly 22 years of loyal (and, if I do say so myself, superior) service, I’ve been downsized. Laid off. Shown the door.

Sure, it hurts. The only reason the Tampa Tribune gives is that my position had to be eliminated. Something about being more “local.” Movie reviews are available all over the world for free. The fact that I did a lot more than just review movies apparently was not a factor. A consistent, local critic is a luxury the struggling paper can no longer afford.

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It's good to be back home after a busy travel stretch. I'll be around for the next two and a half weeks recovering and catching up on all that work stuff. The next trip is May 9-12 to San Francisco/Palo Alto.

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Jory Des Jardins, BlogHer and Larisa Hall, TheFind.com, addressed how to reach the true influencers on the web, women. They shared a campaign that they completed online.

Jory described what BlogHer is and how they have grown over the past year to over 10,000 members, almost purely WOM driven. They do not advertise. Jory views the site as the TVGuide to women bloggers.

Jory sees the marketing dollar moving, and more of this is moving online. While people spend 36.4% of their time online, advertising only spends around 5% online. Looking at BlogHer stats: 94% female, 64% between the ages of 28-40, 51% visit daily, 94% with high school education. The women are also not afraid to buy online.

In October of 2006, TheFind.com launched a new 'search by color' feature. The campaign objective was to drive women to the site to use the service and build buzz about the feature. But how do you market a service like this? TheFind knew they wanted to support a charitable cause as part of the program, TheFind.com looked to BlogHer and asked their members how they should proceed.

The BlogHer network wanted to support Doctors Without Borders. TheFind.com donated $1 for searches for anything red on its shopping search engine. BlogHer was given the exclusive run of the campaign so they could have a sense of ownership. The members appreciated that.

When users completed searches on TheFind.com that resulted in a donation they received immediate feedback and thanks.

The campaign resulted in an increase in 'red' searches from 1% to 12%. Over 10% of the searchers came back 5-6 times in order to search again and donate. The donation to Doctors Without Borders was $10,000.

What's better click-thrus or blog chatter? Jory and Larisa think that blog posts are better since it also helps boost your SEO.

What did they learn?
- Be creative, but keep it simple
- Identify a cause that your target is known to care about
- Give examples, help them out
- Interact with those bloggers who participating
- Always solicit and respond to feedback
- If you are choosing a philanthropic route, choose your charity carefully to make sure they spend their money wisely

Doing good = ink in the blogosphere. If your campaign can be a story in itself then it will be talked about.

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Christine Morrison, Intuit, and other panelists presented a case study on an exciting topic, taxes. All joking aside, the topic is something we can all relate to at this time of year.

Christine serves as the product manager for TurboTax and makes sure the entire customer experience and product lives up to the expectations of customers. To get things started you need to listen to your customers. Customers are you best teachers.

Most importantly though, you need to act on what you hear from your customers. That's what separates listening from engagement.

So what does WOM have to do with taxes? Believe it or not there are passionate users of TurboTax. Intuit built the Inner Circle as a community for their passionate users. They wanted to solicit their input and then give something back. One of the difficult things it keeping the balance between what we give and what we get. The majority of the members are mostly looking for recognition.

In the product development cycle TurboTax has to be on time. Uncle Sam doesn't push back his tax deadline, so they can't push back the updates to TurboTax.

They currently have 10,000 members out of a customer base of 15 million. This small little sandbox gives Christine and Intuit a great place to test new things. One thing they have been doing are local events for their members. On the internal blog, users have begun to stick up for Intuit, they are becoming brand advocates.

A huge issue for Intuit is the listing of their software on sites like Amazon and the accompanying product reviews. This past year Christine invited their beta users to leave reviews on Amazon. Reviewers were required to disclose that they had received a preview edition of TurboTax.

Intuit works with Informative to collect data about their customers and Inner Circle members. Intuit uses this data to understand what's important to their customers. Content that is discussed is also ranked by the members. The goal is to have scalable conversations with customers.

Promoters want to have an ongoing dialogue with brands while detractors want action to be taken on their issues. This allows Intuit to provide different content to promoters and detractors.

One of the major benefits is that Intuit can allocate resources to fix the issues that matter most to their promoters/detractors.

Building great products builds great WOM. Their research shows that 46% of new customers arrive because of WOM. Rather than mining for customers they think of it as mining for gold. The Inner Circle was mostly a product development program. The decision was made to use the Inner Circle for more outreach programs.

While many organizations use the net-promoter score as an indicator, how many of them actually follow-up on this? What this means is if the person was likely recommend our product, did they actually do it? Intuit learned that 14% of their Inner Circle members were true advocates.

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I love LEGO and my son loves LEGO so I was interested in hearing what Bill Thompson from Informative had to say about how LEGO is using blogs and blogger outreach programs to connect with customers.

Bill asked how marketers cut through the static. But let's define static as: fixed or stationary, showing little change, lacking movement, not really static in the broadcast sense. Now think about static marketing or conversation, it's not good. In product development, static is not good.

What they want to do is adapt, they want to learn from our customers and their conversations. They want to anticipate and exceed unexpressed needs.

LEGO is a 75 year-old company that is re-inventing themselves. They have an extraordinary community. LEGO fans make Star Trek fans look like lightweights.

Recently LEGO embarked on a program to update the Mindstorms product. They asked their fans what they wanted and listened.

The conversation loop is an ongoing process. They ask, listen, prioritize and respond, then start again. With tools like surveys, forums, blogs and profiling they learn about their customers.

With their platform (illustrated below) they can quickly gather feedback from customers on a variety of topics. Not only do the validate certain programs they also rate/rank them. Not only can they look at overall data, the can look across segments.

LEGO uses blogs within their member communities and allows readers to rate posts for the benefit of others in the community. The feedback can be sorted by profile, so users can see what other people like themselves are saying.

A blog allows LEGO fans to:

- Talk to cool LEGO employees, icons
- Rate, rank posts
- Collaborate with others
- Contribute, influence future direction
- Understand, innovate with precision

Customer can contribute and help direct the future of the company.

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Brandon Evans, RepNation and Tracy Sanford, JetBlue led a session detailing JetBlue's ambassador network, CrewBlue.

Tracy started things off by reviewing how WOM impacts JetBlue and marketing in general. JetBlue was a brand that was really built on WOM. Their research has shown that 81% of JetBlue fliers recommend us to a friend. Their focus was the bring humanity back to airline travel.

From JetBlue's perspective they want to help amplify the conversation that already existed among their customers. It's a fortunate situation to be in.

JetBlue's communications strategy has a number of components (shown below). One of their first initiatives was a series of commercials featuring letters read by actual customers. The commercials were genuine and honest. No shots of planes flying off into the sunset or airline pilot hugging a small child.

Another focus is their Blue Betty mobile marketing unit. This traveling JetBlue program allows people to experience the JetBlue way of travel.

Much of the content their receive from customers is shared via a microsite.

The next question is how do we introduce JetBlue to college students while maintaining the passion that many of their current customers feel.

Previous to 2005 JetBlue had never used an outsider represent them, previously it was always a JetBlue employee. The other issue is that JetBlue is part of the culture in New York, but it's not always so big in other markets.

Their goal was to become the air carrier of choice for college students. But, for the most part many students had never flown JetBlue.

The first step was to select the channels and markets. For JetBlue they were looking for the individuals that made campuses move. When it came to campus selection they targeted the following markets: New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They wanted to indentify passionate JetBlue fans who are creative, responsible campus leaders.

A focus of the training was to make the ambassadors feel part of the team. They become part of your marketing team and really embrace your brand. They allowed their ambassadors some flexibility in customizing local programs. Sometimes a local event turns into a great idea for a national campaign.

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Gary Colen, Alloy Media + Marketing, presented a case study based upon the work they had done with Helio, a new wireless brand in targeting college students.

First off we need to look at the market. The college market is usually defined as one market. but it's really hundreds of markets. If you look at a target, you have a college student, part of a larger group, money to spend, media editor, brand experimenter, strong friend-fluence.

College students are sometimes a good test market. They have grown up with technology and love to experiment. Also the college market is always growing. Today there are 17.4 million students.

They looked at how students spend their 'fun' money. Food is the number one, followed by entertainment, clothing, cell phone, personal care products, cosmetics. The average college student spends $32/month on cell phone service.

Their research showed that a large majority of students avoid ads on the internet, text messaging ads, direct mail and ads on social networking sites. College students are also prone to test new brands and often seek the advice of others when making purchases.

Helio recruited 21 on-campus ambassadors. These ambassadors received extensive training about the wireless market and the Helio brand. This included a visit to the Helio HQ.

Once on campus they began an incremental exposure plan. The reps used Facebook as a primary communication tool. They used the tools that the students use. The major goals included:

- Brand Impressions
- Product Engagements
- Event Attendance

Helio soon became a natural part of the Rep's daily lives. They integrated Helio into their social network profiles.

At the end of the day it's about having a great product. Helio was fortunate that they had a great product with a good feature-set.

Unfortunately Greg didn't have a Helio device for us to play with :-(

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Noted author of the Cluetrain Manifesto and the upcoming book Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Dave Weinberger kicked things off this morning at WOMBAT in New Orleans.

Dave started off his keynote with a question, "Yes we know that markets are conversations, but is marketing a conversation?" Our first duty is to the conversation. But what happens to marketing with the top priority is conversation?

For many years we lived in the world of broadcast, i.e. a select few talking to everybody else. We get to listen, we receive the radio waves. We want to lean forward and not lean back. Things are changing.

There has been an evolution of the market. It started as a place to do business, the traditional market. Now the term is a verb, it means to sell to somebody. This was driven by the industrial revolution. Customers became consumers, things that can be replaced. Conversation became messages.

Dave quotes Doc Searls, "There's no market for messages." Marketing becomes a war.

Instead of relying upon corporations for information, people rely upon each other.

What are marketing conversations really like? Dave referenced the Juicy Fruit blog campaign. The blog was designed by people that probably had seen a blog, but never really interacted with blogs. The bloggers thought they were being passionate consumers, but they were just being lame.

Dave recently shopped for a washer and dryer. Rather than visiting the Kenmore site he searched blogs. He trusts the information he receives from other people. Often there is information about products/services that you can only get from other customers.

It's not the value of conversation, it's the value in conversation. People talk in real voices and have conversations that are opened ended. Conversation is about WE are interested in.

Control by the market is increasing. There is more person to person communication than broadcast communication. However it's not about the tools and the content of this new market. It's the connections.

For years there was a separation between content and meta-data in the analog world. Today, with everything digital, all content and meta-data are digital.

The owners of the information no longer own the organization of that content, the users do. You can no longer know what people are interested in. People will determine that on their own. The lesson, include everything.

Tagging and folksonomies have given users control over the organization of content.

The result is that content becomes more valuable when it's free. Think about the travel industry. For an airline their flight information is more valuable when they share it with other sites. Users don't want to search every airline site.

Things like playlists are bringing order to the chaos that is all the music in the world.

Hyperlinks are not neutral. A link is a little act of generosity. You're telling people to go somewhere else. Links are like conversation, you recognize that somebody else's view is important.

The majority of company web pages are not designed to be conversational since they own it. They think they know what we want and how we want it.

Dave turned the conversation to Edelman and their recent issues. Dave noted that he is a consultant to Edelman. While Edelman is genuinely trying to do things right they have screwed up. The truth though, is that this is hard to do. Companies are going to fail before they succeed.

Why is this new conversational market so hard to deal with? Clients want to sell, and customers are still sitting ducks. Advertising does work, we as humans respond to good advertising. The combination of self-interest and human meaning leads to self-delusion.

One of the major issues is that marketers get paid to talk. Does that corrode the conversation?

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The after-party last night featured Ted Breaux (photo below) and the new Absinthe. Good party, and good pictures. Here's the set.

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Online is the new darling, but offline is just as important. Ted Wright, Fizz and Lance Gentry, IZZE, talked about out to build WOM in real world. It's not every day that you see somebody give their presentation from a Segway (well actually once before). Ted and Lance did a great tag-team presentation that was a great break from the standard, speaker A followed by speaker B.

Quick stat from a recent study, 0% of youth surveyed said they would purchase something based upon seeing an billboard at a sporting event. For example, IZZE has no above the line marketing. They have never run a TV or Radio ad or a newspaper ad.

First off, determine the demographic target for your brand. Quantitative and Qualitative research will help. Build on the backs of others, read, read, read what's out there. Learn from others.

Aim for the aspirational person. They may not be a consumer of your product, but reflects the values, practices, attitudes and need-mindset that you want to become and that your target groups aspire to be like.

Be interesting or be gone!

In modern, mature advertising markets that average consumer receives 4000 advertising messages per day. If you're not interesting then you need to go back to the drawing board and make your product interesting.

Determine influencer hubs for your demographic. Key influencers are worth almost a million impressions for a brand. Constantly refine you approach as well. Look at where you are at and what you'll need to do a few quarters from now. Influencers are always looking for new things and new stories. By changing your approach you satisfy that need for change on the part of the influencer.

An influencer will not stay with you if you don't innovate.

Use the 'Treasure Hunt' to your advantage. Consumers in North America are always on a hunt for the next luxury good or the next bargain. What's the story behind that hunt? Make sure to give consumers an option to trade up and trade down. Don't get stuck in the middle.

Let's talk a bit about cultural creatives. The cultural creatives are doing now, what you need to be doing with your brand. They are 50 million individuals, they are book buyers, they desire authenticity, they aren't consumers, they're shoppers. They are technologically savvy, the love to experiment. They think they're unique, but they're not since there are 50 million of them.

People are buying things to silently or non-verbally communicate who they are. It's what they drink, what they drive. Whole Foods is there church.

Jumping the chasm is making the leap from the tastemakers to the progressive user to the mass market. The mass market plays follow the leader.

How to translate this offline? Great products sample, average products advertise. Lesson, sample, sample, sample. Invite people to sample, never interrupt or intercept.

Teach influencers your brand story and they will share. Influencers want to know the story behind the product/brand.

Giving away free stuff does not build a brand.

PR is critical because is validates WOM but remember that the story/editorial has to be earned.

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Want to learn about how to use blogs for buzz? Chances are Anil Dash from SixApart and David Jacobs from Apperceptive can help.

Anil kicked things off with a question, "What can you do with a book?" For the most part people think of books as things you can consume/read. You never think about writing a book, at first. Today with the web there is an entire generation of kids growing up that know they can write, they can take part in the process.

Persistence and awareness are two major things associated with blogs.

Content does not need to be thrown away, persistence can be important, and is increasingly so. Google can find you. Almost half the visits to many blogs are from content that is over a month old. Now think about your e-mail newsletters, can I find the content from last month's e-mail newsletter?

Does the home page matter? So many people are finding content from search results, links from friends.

By putting our names and dates on content, we are creating a social contract. There is a promise of "I will stay in touch." But a promise is more than words, it takes work. It's about relationships, with friends, customers, etc.

It's about making the tools on the web as meaningful as other mediums. It doesn't have to be disposable.

Awareness is another key issue. So much of the e-mail traffic that Anil receives is not relevant at the time he receives it.

The devices you want to use are the one that give you control. Think Tivo or the iPod. Each of these devices gives you control over the experience. RSS is similar, it gives you control. RSS delivers awareness without interruption.

Awareness keeps the lines of communication open without the rudeness. Blogs are about maintaining a relationship with the people you care about. Blogs allow you to scale a conversation beyond the traditional one-on-one you have in person.

Next up, David Jacobs reviewed some examples of how blogs are used in the real world. The first example was Serious Eats. The conversation about food now takes place online. The other thing is the site opens up the conversation to the community. There are experts, but isn't everybody and expert in something? The site features profiles. Users can tell a bit about themselves, web sites, their favorite foods, etc.

How is this different than a forum where the person with the most free time wins? There is control from a post/editorial standpoint.

The user profiles builds a history of the users contribution to the site. It's their reputation. You respect those that contribute to the site. If you have a community like this for your customers it lets you learn who the real influencers are.

Once you begin to host the conversation, it's like having a dinner party at your house. You learn a lot in a civil environment.

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While walking through the French Quarter yesterday afternoon I spotted this pair of his & hers scooters. They even have the colors right.

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WOMMA always has fun lunchtime activities. Last year at the DC event we had the exciting Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament. WOMBAT 07 was no exception. John Moore from Brand Autopsy provided five scenarios for the tables. Each table was tasked with reviewing their individual case studies and then present their findings.

The scenarios: Negative WOM, Selling WOM, WOM & Disclosure, WOM vs CGM and WOM & Boring Products.

For the next 30 minutes each table worked amongst themselves to figure out what to do.

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After a quick morning break, a panel made up of Pinny Gniwisch, Ice.com and Mark Hillman, Resource Interactive talked about this thing called YouTube. Heard of it? :-)

First up was Pinny who talked about how Ice.com is using YouTube. To do innovative things sometimes you need to challenge management. Often they don't understand new technologies and need some convincing.

There are four C's in the diamond world. Pinny decided to build up the four C's of YouTube.

Convince: You need to convince management. They started small with a basic video and racked up over 500,000 thousand views.

That small experiment convinced management to try things.

Clarify: You must clarify your mission. At Ice.com their mission is to have people join their channel. To build a relationship with customers.

Commit: Commit to the movement. You must be genuine, otherwise the YouTube community with shun you. Pinny joined the YouTube community, he interacted with other members.

Collaborate: Make an effort to integrate within the company.

In the end Ice.com has seen a tremendous amount of response from a campaign that only cost a little over $1200.

Next up was Mark Hillman. Mark's main message. Create conversation worthy content. Give people a reason to talk.

Too many videos are heavy on the branding or entertainment. There needs to be a happy medium.

Some of the initial work Mark's firm did for Herbal Essence hair care products was a bit too product heavy. While the videos were informative they didn't take to the true spirit of YouTube.

Further projects with Herbal Essence created the Dump Cupid campaign. The videos were mostly entertainment focussed that was unbranded, with the exception of a URL at the end of the spots. The YouTube portion was part of a total campaign, online and offline.

Mark's tips:

- Find something that is already accepted and back you brand into it
- Always go entertainment over brand
- Make if feel low-budget
- Think of everything, but make it feel chaotic
- Keep it loose
- Be brave

From the Q&A: Mark said it's hard to get people to go to consumer products/goods web sites.

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Ed Keller, Keller Fay Group and David Shiffman, MediaVest looked at how you can integrate WOM into your traditional advertising mix.

First to speak was David Shiffman. WOM has gone beyond the discussion of how we can define it, to measurement and strategy. Research estimates that there are 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations each day in America. That's a big number. How do you get a handle on/measure/engage with a number that big. Obviously firms want to know what people are saying about them.

The current trends indicate a decreasing amount of trust in brands among customers. In 1999 it was 71%, in 2006 it's at 63%.

Overall though, WOM Is gaining in advertising. Word or mouth is essential to rebuilding trust.

The new landscape, specifically with blogs, social networks, etc is now powered by conversation. In some ways this echoes the social marketplace that existing in the 1800's. Looking at today's marketplace, the successful brands: Google, Starbucks, Red Bull, etc are built upon word of mouth.

Its important to remember that WOM is not replacing or beating advertising, it's a partnership. It has to be considered in a larger context within the advertising/marketing campaign.

Real customers are you best evangelists. People find WOM coming from real customers to be more credible, are more likely to be passed along and be acted upon.

The role of advertising has changed. In basic terms it used to be delivering a message to a consumer. Today, it's about reaching influencers, building awareness, sharing, conversation and consumer advocacy.

There are three rules: Identify & Engage Influencers (think NetFlix), Inspire & Reward Advocacy (Swiffer), Measure & Learn (Measure)

The last item is increasingly important. What are the business outcomes and how do you measure your success? WOM is measurable, both offline and online.

Next up was Ed Keller. Ed spoke about the 2007 Super Bowl ads. What does a large advertising event like the Super Bowl do for WOM? The Kelly Fay group conducted research prior-to and after the Super Bowl to measure the impact. They conducted 3,500 interviews before the game and 2,700 after the game.

During the month prior to the Super Bowl, brands involved in advertising during the game had 5.4% of all brand conversations, after they game they were part of 6.4%. That's a 15%increase. From a raw number standpoint that's 148.4 million conversations before and 170.4 million conversations after the game.

WOM about Super Bowl advertisers was much more positive (61%) than negative (10%) before the game and this ratio improved after the game (63% to 8%).

People talking about the Super Bowl advertisers' brands were 55% more likely after the game to refer to the advertisers' TV commercial. Although many of the advertisers included an internet component. However, there was no significant increase in WOM online, in fact it decreased.

As the WOM grows, post Super Bowl, the chance of conversations leading to purchasing decisions increases as well.

Obviously the Monday after the game shows the biggest increase in WOM related to the brands, but that steadily returns to normal levels after the game. Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Taco Bell and Honda enjoyed the highest increase in WOM after the game.

Lessons learned: WOM and advertising can work together. Advertising is frequently referenced in WOM. Advertising works best for WOM when it targets influencers, uses consumer-speak (not market-speak) and is portable.

Advertisers should rethink their objectives - aim for current customers. Give them the language and motivation to recommend.

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Tuesday's opening keynote was delivered by Chip Heath from Stanford University. Chip talked about how to make things stick.

In his research Chip has identified a number of ideas/concepts that are naturally sticky. For example: You Only Use 10% of Your Brain. He asked the audience who had heard that? Almost 100% of the audience had. Chip asked, "Who conducted the research study on that?" Other sticky myths: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.

But what makes these myths stick? Can we reverse engineer them to learn how to make our ideas sticky? One thing we have going for us is that these urban legends don't have blogs, advertising, newsletters and pr assistance. Imagine what a sticky idea with corporate backing could do.

Chip listed some of the basic foundations of Sticky ideas. Sticky ideas are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories.

Think about the previous statement, "You only use 10% of your brain." That's unexpected.

How do you stand out in crowded markets? Let's look at hamburgers. How about the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, AZ. Heart Attack Grill embraces the opposite tendency within culture today. We know that fast food is bad, but they take the opposite approach. The Heart Attack Grill serves the triple bypass burger and a number of other fatty foods. The unexpected approach that the Heart Attach Grill builds tremendous word of mouth.

However is having a great product enough to garner significant WOM?

Look at the Ritz-Carlton. While they test very high and have a great product, it doesn't get people talking. Perhaps the unexpected will give people something to talk about. Now look at DoubleTree, it's a standard hotel, but there is something unexpected about them, it gets people talking. DoubleTree provides their customers fresh-baked cookies.

What gets people taking about the Toyota Prius? Not the mileage, not the hybrid drive....people talk about the key. What's interesting is that with all this technology and environmental aspects of the car, it's a basic fundamental thing that people talk about.

Getting back to the Ritz, what could they do that was unexpected? They developed the "Big Night In". Rather than having guests leave the hotel to eat dinner, they encourage guests to eat at restaurant on property. This includes an in-room champagne toast and appetizer from the restaurant. Now there is something for guests to talk about.

Shifting gears, Chip then talked about concrete ideas that embed themselves in our minds. For example take the urban legend about the stolen kidney. When we here this story we have the ability to pass that on to friends with amazing clarity. Now think about your the last PowerPoint you saw, can you recall that with clarity?

This is the challenge that business faces, many times your ideas/concepts are not concrete, they are abstract. Are there tangible, concrete elements that can be included in your statements? A term like High Quality is abstract.

Chip analyzed the mission statement from Eddie Bauer: "To give you outstanding quality, service, and value, and guarantee that we may be worthy of your high esteem. While that is a decent statement, it's not tangible." That statement could be applied to almost any service business. What makes it unique? Nothing. However once you hear the stories about who Eddie Bauer was and what he did, suddenly the brand takes on a tangible existence. Why not convey those stories?

There is a reason that abstraction is so pervasive. The curse of knowledge. As we become experts, we find it difficult to imagine what it's like to not be an expert. When you talk to your 11-year-old son about a video game, you're on the other side of the curse of knowledge. Your son can't fathom your ignorance on the subject.

Sticky ideas are also very emotional. Identity is a powerful motivator. Think about road-side litter. The target market is the 18 to 30-year-old truck driving male. How do you get that target market to care about litter?

The campaign that was created featured the tag-line, "Don't mess with Texas." Texans are a very patriotic people. Once they made the connection that littering was 'messing' with Texas the target market responded.

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The opening session started off with Ed Keller, WOMMA Board President. Ed provided a brief overview of WOMMA. WOMMA was founded in 2004, and as of today has 370 members encompassing brands, agencies and academics.

WOMMA's mission is to make WOM part of the mainstream marketing mix. There are three fundamental pillars within WOMMA: Ethical Leadership, Research and ROI and Best Practices.

The basis for ethical leadership is the Honesty ROI:

Honesty of Relationships: You say who you're speaking for.
Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe.
Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity.

WOMMA is also working to advance the profession. Research fuels strategy and planning, evaluation and learning.

WOMBAT is designed for best practices, it's why we're here in the Big Easy.

Ed then went on to introduce the WOMMA board with some interesting tid-bits about each of them. The purpose of course was to help start conversation.

Next up was Virginia Miracle from Brains on Fire for a WOM 101. Word of Mouth is consumers sharing information with other consumers. Word of Mouth Marketing is brand to customer to customer. Ultimately it's about giving people a reason to talk about your product.

Types of WOMM are: Buzz Marketing, Viral Marketing, Community Marketing, Evangelists, Product Seeding, Influencer Marketing, Cause Marketing, Conversation Creation, Brand Blogging and Referral Programs

The guiding principle is to empower customers to share their honest experiences. Ideally WOM facilities a dialogue among customers and with their brands.

WOM can't be faked. It's unethical and it can cause a backlash.

Why WOM? WOM has credibility, advertising is becoming decreasingly effective, and empowering the consumer benefits everyone.

Next on stage was Jim Nail with TNS Media Intelleigence/Cymfony. Jim is chair of the ethics committee at WOMMA. Jim's message: Ethics - Good Business, Not Just Good Deeds.

Jim showed a slide featured the Lone Ranger and Robin Hood. He asked, "Who would you rather be?" They both champion the poor, but Robin can be a shady character. However if Robin had just used the WOMMA Ethics Evaluation Tool he might have dialed it back a bit.

Consumers expect business to be ethical. Ethics are essential to brands. Ethical behavior is practical. Ethics is about trust, and trust is fundamental to any brand.

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Things are about to kick-off this morning at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training 3 here in New Orleans, LA. First up will be some opening remarks and a brief review of 'What is WOM?'. Photos from the event are here (the light is tough).

We were supposed to have three people blogging this event, but it looks like it's just going to be me :-)

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B.L. Ochman blogs about receiving a Nikon D80 camera as part of a blogger relations program lead by MWW Group.

I had lunch with Tom Biro in New York last week and he clued me in on the program, very cool on Nikon's part. Quite a few friends and bloggers that I read will be getting a test-drive of the Nikon D80. Who? Gotta keep a secret :-)

Of course I am a Nikon fan for life since they helped me out in a pinch last year. I ended up purchasing a D80 last year and have loved the camera. It allows me to take shots like this:

Update: Gigglechick has also received a camera.

Update 2: Mike Manuel received one as well and has some photos of the packaging.

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A former client is now with the communications department at Virginia Tech. Obviously with the news today I went to check out the site. The school has wisely switched to a low-bandwidth version in this time of crisis.

Thoughts and prayers to all those involved.

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Yes I am an Apple fan-boy, but I have owned my share of PCs in the past decade. One of the most lauded aspects of Apple is their product design...they just make things that look good. So here is my challenge. Show me a 17-inch PC laptop that doesn't look like an overweight hunk of plastic?

For the record, the only PC laptop design I've ever looked at and said, "wow, nice lines" is the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X-series.

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Our local community held a Sunset Celebration this past Saturday. Needless to say I took a few sunset photos.

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Hot on the heals of blogging from the Forrester Marketing Forum, I will be at WOMBAT in New Orleans the first of this week. Keeping with my 'How to Blog a Conference' guidelines, I spent some time today prepping many of the posts I will be writing.

What does prepping mean?

Well WOMMA has got the event-blogging thing down to a science. Last week I received a schedule of the sessions I will be attending/blogging. With that schedule I have already created drafts of the session posts. These drafts have the title, categories, tags already saved. I also write a short intro listing all the speakers/panelists and link up any blogs/companies as needed.

Spending about 30-45 minutes today saves all that time during the event. Having a session post prepped ahead of time allows me to concentrate on the speakers and photography as soon as the session gets started. I don't have to fumble to get everybody's name/links done.

Why the warning for a title? Well in the prep I see that I will be posting close to 20 scheduled items during the event. That number will probably increase during the course of the event though :-)

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Some might call it junk or useless stickers, I call it art :-)

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After New York, my next stop will be New Orleans for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training event, otherwise known as WOMBAT. I am going to help blog the event along with some of the usual suspects. Of course the WOMMA sessions are always great, but they also do a great job with their 'evening' events.

Also, if you're in to the WOM thing and want to help with some research, make sure you hook-up with Peter Kim from Forrester Research. Peter will be at WOMBAT and is looking to meet with folks to discuss some WOM research he's working on.

See you in New Orleans.

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I'm making a quick day-trip to New York today for a PRSA event. I have a bit of spare time during my trip so I'll be hanging the 'The Biro' and attempting to get some good photos.

My most recent trip to New York was to the fake one....the one in Vegas :-)

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I think I've said this before :-) When you launch a corporate blog make sure you own your domain and the long-term control of your content.

Shel points out that Kryptonite is blogging. Great, but they're using Blogger and a URL they don't control: http://unbreakable-bonds.blogspot.com/

Spend a little bit of time and money to use/configure a service that allows you to have your own domain name. How about blog.kryptonitelocks.com? Or if you want to stick with the 'unbreakable' theme the domain unbreakablebonds.com is available (as of this post).

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I have been working on finalizing the date for the 2007 edition of BlogOrlando. I almost have things confirmed but I wanted to at least throw a date out there so people could pencil it in.

BlogOrlando 2007 will be held September 27-29. The plan is a similar schedule to last year's. That means the main event will be on Friday, September 28th. On Thursday the 27th we'll have a dinner for those coming in town early. Saturday will be a Disney day.

Granted this might change...but I certainly hope that it doesn't. As soon as the date is finalized I'll post some more details here and on the BlogOrlando site. If you're interested in leading a session let me know.

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Originally I had planned to stay for both days of the Forrester Marketing Forum, but I have another event on Thursday that I need to get back for. With that, I am leaving Miami late Wednesday night and dashing back to Central Florida. There were a few sessions on Thursday I really wished I could make, but duty calls.

Similar to Mplanet in 2006, this event featured an all-star cast of speakers and sessions. Highlights for me were the session by Peter Kim, Sylvia Reynolds and Eric Kintz.

All my photos from the event can be found on Flickr. Blog coverage will continue on the Forrester Marketing Blog.

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Eric Kintz, VP Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence with HP lead the final keynote session of the day.

Eric started off his keynote by plugging the primary theme again, the customer is the focus. It doesn't matter if you're B2C or B2B, it's the customer. HP has millions of interactions with customers every day and every second. HP sells three printers every second. That's a lot of customer interaction. They have to get it right with each of those customers and with each of those interactions.

To drive customer centricity at HP they are focusing on:

- Integrating the customer into driving business
- Measure and manage what matters to the customer
- Inspire employees to drive customer centricity

HP developed their performance chain. First off they had to gather metrics and tie customer centricity to profitability. Customer experience builds customer loyalty, which builds sales. Next up, operations looks to improve efficiencies in processes that matter to customers. The final piece is the employees. The goal is to have employees focus their attitudes and actions towards the customer.

HP measures and manages what matters to the customer. Technical support is a major customer touch-point. They want to make sure that when you call support that your problem is fixed and done so quickly.

Internally, HP has been focusing on customer experience training. Teaching their staff how the customer thinks. Another initiative is the 'Voice of the Customer'. With this program, any HP staff member can log a complaint/issue for a customer.

HP is also fortunate to be a B2C and B2B provider. They can often take a B2B customer (and their employees) and turn them into B2C customers. That's a powerful thing. Moving forward with B2B they want to market one account at a time. It means knowing the customer.

One new project is Change Artists, it is a portion of the HP web site that allows CEOs and CIOs to discuss issues surrounding technology. The discussion is about problems and solutions and not HP products. By hosting this conversation HP is learning what their customers want.

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The breakout session in the afternoon that I attended discussed customer-centricity in the B2B space. Can it be done? The panel was made up of: Laura Ramos - Forrester Research, Don Friedman - CA, Jeff Reid - UPS, Marc Ruggiano - John H. Harland Co.

Laura introduced the session with some background on how the topic came about. Like many of the other sessions, it was based upon Peter Kim's research on marketing organizational structures. Much of Peter's research was B2C focussed, so how does this apply to B2B? Are the same sets of skills and attributes of a traditional B2B marketer relevant?

Forrester's recent research has shown and many B2B marketing organizations do not use customer-centric metrics. Once again, do the new rules of customer-centric B2C apply to B2B?

Laura then introduced panelists one at a time. Each of them spent a few minutes talking about experiences from within their organization.

Don Friedman, CA - Yes, B2B can be customer-centric, but the big question is how? One of the issues they face is how do they bring products to market that customers really want. Marketing used to be a function of promoting a product, today it's driving product development, the campaigns come at the end. When you have 1200 products in the portfolio it's difficult to change thinking overnight.

Being customer-centric doesn't always mean restructuring your marketing organization, it means putting the needs of the customer first. Sometimes you can work within existing structures to get that done.

Jeff Reid, UPS - UPS has a huge, diverse customer base. They have always used basic segmentation to organize their efforts. Moving forward they look to enhance their current segmentation and how those customers use the different channels within UPS. They have also developed personas. Their research has shown that they sell to five distinct personas. These personas are always looked to in the development of products/relationships. They looked to see what pained their customers and worked backwards.

A traveling road-show introduced the rest of the company to these personas. The road-show was successful since many internal groups had never really met/dealt with a customer.

Another major focus is creating and using credible metrics. When you cross different business units in a customer-centric model you need to make sure that the metrics you are using cross over well. For example in the web-space abandonment is an often used metric. However, outside the web-space it's not a well known term.

Marc Ruggiano, John H. Harland Co. - Harland is a major provider of products and services to financial services companies. Many people know Harland from checks. They print checks. However the payment world is changing. Banks aren't seeing an increase in check orders.

For years Harland had a geographically organized sales teams and product-focussed call centers. In the last two years they have undergone a large reorganization. Sales and marketing is now organized by the financial institution segment, i.e. large bank, small bank.

Harland has an interesting cross between B2B and B2C. The banks are Harland's clients, but the end users of the products are consumers. In this model then need to address the needs of the client and then their clients. Not only do they need to know their customers, they need to know the consumers.

Customer-centric marketing matters if:

- You server clients with different challenges
- You customize products for clients
- You have different business models for different clients
- Your competitors vary from client to client
- Your performance or expectation differs by client
- Your budget dollars need to stretch farther than before

Laura then joined the group and opened up the Q&A. She opened with a statement, "Are we all in agreement, B2B can be customer-centric" The panel agreed. Next, do you need to organize yourself around customer channels?

Don wondered if companies can really afford to re-organize their marketing structures by customer. There is benefit, but we're back to the 80/20 rule. The largest customer groups get the attention first.

How do you handle internal politics and disagreements on shared projects?

Jeff said that within UPS they let the customers decide. When you look at what the customer wants/needs then you take opinion out of the development process.

Good lines from Don: "If you don't have a customer you don't have a business." "Being customer-centric is not conducting focus groups and reading reports."

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During the Q&A of her session, Sylvia Reynolds from Wells Fargo said (paraphrasing):

For years everybody was searching for the online customer. There are no online customers. Customers are real people.

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The final keynote before lunch featured Sylvia Reynolds, CMO, Wells Fargo. Sylvia's session also dealt with customer centricity (sense a trend here).

Sylvia started with a few basic questions: What is customer-centricity? If this is so important why haven't we been talking about this before? Are all these new technologies (blogs, podcasts, etc) enablers or distractions?

Sylvia provided some stats about Well Fargo and how they interact with their customers. Wells Fargo has 23 millions costumers with millions of interactions with them via stores, on-line, phone and ATM.

What's important to realize is that in their history Wells Far