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| The (sponsored) word on the street | The (sponsored) word on the street |
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| Over 80% of people trust word of mouth By Denise Winterman BBC News Magazine Word-of-mouth marketing, the latest advertising boom in the US, is coming to Britain. Would you be prepared to slip a casual product endorsement into a cosy chat with friends? | |
| An average we are bombarded by over 3,000 marketing messages a day. From Coronation Street to school sports' day, nearly everything is sponsored by one company or another. | |
| But just 14% of regular campaigns now have any effect, according to Marketing Week. The media is too cycnical and media savvy to buy into marketing messages anymore. | |
| "Consumers are now in control, brand lost the advertising fight," says Tom Himpe, author of Advertising Is Dead, Long Live Advertising! | |
| "Consumers are no longer passive and the internet means they can make their moans on a global scale. It's a vulnerable position for brands." | |
| It's a situation that has forced advertising to go back to basics - word of mouth. It has always been the industry's Holy Grail, the only question was how to harness it. | |
| Cue word-of-mouth marketing (WOM). It's when people - called agents, ambassadors or transmitters - are sent new products by companies to try out and tell their family and friends about. It can be anything from mobile phones to sausages. | |
| Companies are at pains to point out it is not stealth, buzz or viral marketing. Agents have to disclose that they are involved in a marketing campaign. | |
| They are not scripted, what they say doesn't have to be positive and they are not paid, but do get to keep the products. They also get what the industry calls "social currency" - the thrill of being the first to try something new. | |
| It's already a big in the US. according to Word of Mouth Marketing Association (Womma) 47% of the Fortune 500 are adopting WOM programmes in 2007. | |
| Now it is coming to the UK. One of the leading companies in the US, BzzAgent, is joining forces with advertising company GroupM UK on Tuesday to form what is said to be the first WOM company based in the UK. | |
| "Advertisers have always been fascinated with word of mouth," says Joe Chernov, CEO of BzzAgent and co-founder Womma. | |
| It's easy to see why people would sign up to getting the latest mobile phone but usually the products are far less exciting. That doesn't seem to put people off. | |
| In the US people are signing up to BzzAgent at the rate of 5,000 a week. It boasts a network of over 250,000 agents. Before the company even launched in the UK over 160 people had been in contact about signing up. | |
| Rani Schlenoff is a BzzAgent ambassador in the US and has tried and tested over 18 products, including toothbrushes and candy bars. | |
| "One of the most natural thing we all do is speak about what we've bought and seen," she says. "I'm a talker naturally, so this was right up my alley. | |
| "My family and friends love hearing about what I'm trying. As for strangers, after the initial shock of me injecting myself into their lives, they are usually very happy to hear what I have to say." | |
| But doesn't the fact businesses are involved corrupt the message? Not accroding to research | |
| But there issues surrounding the industry. Firstly, the ethical question - isn't it, well, just a bit sneaky? . Agents are asked to disclose their part in a marketing campaign, but how do we know they do? | |
| A code of ethics has been drawn up by Womma, but the industry is basically self-regulating as the Advertising Standards Agency has no rules or guidelines when it come to WOM. |