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Fun Photo Fridays: Cindy Krum Doing a Tea Trick at SES Denver Training

At the beginning of this week, I had the pleasure of doing the Social Media training in Denver for Search Engine Strategies Training event there.  It was a lot of fun, and was also my first time in Denver.  Those of you who follow me on twitter, saw how I was shocked about how far off in the "boonies" the airport was!

While there, Denver local, Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, entertained a few of us.  The first night we met at the Blake Street Tavern - formally the Flying Dog Brewery.  For anyone going there, try the Scratch Ale, it's great!  Then, Tuesday night Cindy took us to Mataam Fez, a Moroccan restaurant that was just a great experience.  Cindy even did a tea trick for us - Cindy, not only are you brave, but you rock! :)

If you like this photo of Cindy Krum doing a Tea Trick at SES Denver Training, feel free to comment and favorite it as that's how we'll be judging the photos at the end of the year! Check out the rest of the fun at SES Denver Training, there's over 60 photos to view.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Jen Gulvik Presents Houlihan's WOMM Case Study

Houlihan's went through an entire restructuring, down to even changing the forks and the music.

Half the people who live within a 3 mile radius of the restaurants, have never been to a Houlihan's or were lapse customers.  The only people who really knew about Houlihan's was employees, current customers and a "few" others.  They do limited mass media advertising.  They really win their customers over one at a time.  They are in an environment where their competition have millions of dollars to spend in mass media.  That climate made them look at other ways to work with marketing.

They started with emails to 100,000k members.  Customers are focused on culture.  And Houlihan's focuses on the customer.  The CEO reads every single customer comments, Jen responds to 70% of them.  What they have noticed lately, they have been getting more fan mail.  She believes this is because of the change in the environment, that customers want to help take control of the brand.

They get a ton of fun, funny comments.

WOMMA WOMM-U- Pick a Charity Workshop Results

Following on from the Pick a Charity Workshop sessions yesterday and this morning, the ideas and results for each of the 3 different charities were presented over the lunch sessions.

Overall, some interesting solutions were generated and presented, with ideas ranging from generating basic awareness to eco-terrorism.

So here's what each group came up with, just to give you an idea of how the thought processes differed within each group:

WOMMA WOMM-U- Jordan Corredera Keynote

With the previous keynote running 10 minutes over it's timeslot, and technical issues further delaying the start, this keynote shrank from a 45 minute presentation to a 30 minute presentation, which as it turned out was probably a good thing.  Unlike the previous, more polished / rehearsed presentations, this one came off as more like a time filler.  Which isn't to say that there weren't a few interesting pieces of information, but they did tend to be few and far between. 

The presentation was given by Jordan Corredera of Carnival Cruise Lines, the Head of the Interactive Strategy Team, and was moderated by Ted Wright, the founder of Fizz.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Bob Pearson from Dell Keynote

Bob Pearson, of Dell is presenting the first keynote of the morning.  He hates podiums so he's actually walking through the crowd.  So what Dell's Learned so far?

#1  the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation so far.  There is growth ever second.  A month ago China over took the US with the number of people online.  Over 500k people go online for the first time everyday. Do we know their purchase habits?  Do we know their searching habits?  No!

#2  The # of conversations is exploding.  Digital data is exploding. It's increased 6 times over the past 4 years.  The amount of conversations is going up exponentially.

#3  customers want to speak with us in their first language.  English reaches 1/3 of thw orld in a good day.  People want to do business in the language they are comfortable in.  2/3 of what happens in the world is in 9 other languages.Japan is actually the #1 country in the world for conversations - text messages and blogs contribute to this.

WOMMA WOMM-U- Carla Hendra Keynote

The last keynote of the day is delivered by Carla Hendra - Co-CEO Ogilvy North America, Chairman of Ogilvy New York.  Her take on WOM - "Brand Marketing: It's all word of mouth now!"

There currently exists the opportunity to engage a global network of brand activists, and what's better than having the consumer do our jobs for us?

WOMMA WOMM-U- Pick a Charity Workshop

One of the elements of the WOMMU conference is interactivity, and working together on case studies.  To this aim, over lunch (a lunch with  choices of sandwich, none of which a vegetarian such as myself could eat, grr), three different nonprofits were presented. 

1. The Wilderness Society
2. The Overtown Youth Center
3. 1 Sky

WOMMA WOMM-U: OPI Cosmetics Case Study

Judy Stonefield begins by explaining some myths in marketing.  Then she shows a video of super star impersonators at Hollywood and Vine who they interviewed about OPI.  What did they learn?  That they should make a line of colors for super heroes, yes, that is funny!  However, this isn't where their customers are.

OPI and SheSpeaks commissioned a survey of 600 women of what brand nail polish and where they bought it.  IRI measure Food, Drug & Mass Sales, not Salons, Beauty Supply & Beauty Chain stores.  When they included these, it showed, 1 in every 4 bottles of nail polish is OPI.

Internet WOMM campaign.  They created a community, members got an OPI Lip coulor as a thank you gift.  Thousands of women talked about OPI.  She speaks generated thousands of more in WOMM advertising than any print advertising.  Now they are going to also use coupons to help track with conversions.

WOMMA WOMM-U- Jeffrey Graham Keynote

When Li asked me to write on SMG I jokingly said to her that I'd make sure not to work 'blue'.  With that said, the first session of the WOMMA WOMMU conference that I'm covering was by Jeffrey Graham, the Executive Director of Consumer Insights at The New York Times. amd was titled "Word of Mouth: Marketing's Butt Crack"...  (ok, that was his alternative title, the one published in the agenda was "Using Word of Mouth as a Measure of Advertising Effectiveness").

Given that the most commonly used marketing objectives are branding, direct response and product trial, and that the most common measures of marketing effectiveness are direct response and branding, the interesting fact is that the most influential contact point is Word of Mouth Marketing.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Joseph Jaffe Keynote

Joseph Jaffe is the author of "Join the Conversation", and has been a leading voice in the area of Word of Mouth Marketing.  His blog "Jaffe Juice" is one of the most popular marketing blogs on the internet today.  He's also the president and "chief interrupter" of CRAYON.

For all the mis-representing that is going on, all advertising should fall under the new law that the UK has passed.  Word of Mouth has always been around, but never ever at the race, pace and attitude than it has today.  Anything can be a conversation, even a book.

The opportunity is so much bigger than technical silos.  Our opportunity is how to re-invent marketing.  Focusing on relationships is most important.  Businesses would rather have impressions and are not subscribing to the fact that relationships are better.  They don't realize that one relationship - bad relationship can bring down the company.  Jeff Jarvis & Dell are great examples of this, as well as Comcast with the sleeping technician, and the possibility of the pictures in the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign might have been retouched.

You can't just expect WOMM to work and its not bought.  Trying to buy the value of WOMM with one shot doesn't work.  Word of mouth marketing requires conversation and conversations require trust, you really cannot buy trust.  Joe shows his example of ooVoo and comparing it to Pepsi.  Pepsi bought an advertisement on the Super Bowl, there was a spike in talking about them.  He then shows conversations about ooVoo after a WOMM campaign was launched exceeded the talk of Pepsi and then also it went much longer.  Pepsi just had one spike, ooVoo had several.