Building Word-Of-Mouth

The Trend Toward "Tryvertising"

Procter and Gamble is using your listeners to help create marketing campaigns. P&G is building communities of radio listeners and TV viewers who are influential mavens and connectors in order to create unique cutting-edge, word-of-mouth marketing and advertising campaigns.

In its "Tremor" program (tremor.com) P&G targets teens with outgoing personalities who are involved in activities and have lots of friends. By previewing new products to a select part of the teen population, P&G creates genuine excitement and conversation in lunch rooms and elsewhere - possibly more so than an expensive television ad campaign.

Tremor's success with teens has already spawned more groups. P&G has also set up a "Tremor Moms," site Vocalpoint.com, recruiting mothers to discuss and review new products and marketing campaigns and to promote products to their friends and family members.

Tremor brings a new social dimension to marketing by surrounding consumers with marketing messages. As Tremor's CEO, Ted Woehrle says, "The once elusive gold standard of advocacy from a trusted friend is the new best practice of marketing."

Tremor demonstrates that true word-of-mouth is not simply buzz. It's built using "advocacy and amplification." That is, find people who are happy to become brand advocates and give them information that will enable them to amplify or spread brand messages. Much of Tremor's work is old-fashioned product sampling. But marketers in the U.S. say it falls into a new category of marketing: "tryvertising." Tryvertising is another example of a catchy marketing buzzword. But it also underlines the revival of product sampling as a way to capture the attention of busy, skeptical consumers.

"The once elusive gold standard of advocacy from a trusted friend is the new best practice of marketing."

- Ted Woehrle, CEO of Tremor

"Mass advertising is dying," researchers from the marketing website trendwatching.com wrote recently. "Experienced consumers couldn't care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them." Marketers need to find, "more interesting ways to ignite conversations between corporations and consumers". Enter tryvertising.

High end car companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche have struck deals with high end hotels, offering their cars to guests for test drives. The furniture retailer Ikea has set up a guest room and a public "quiet space" in 60 Etap hotels in Germany to let people experience its products.

As Tremor and tryvertising suggest, the future of marketing investment goes beyond forced message-based advertising to a more relevant, empathetic, try-out approach using the highly trusted method, word-of-mouth.

For more information on how to bring tryvertising to life in your marketing, please contact Tripp Eldredge at dmr:
859-655-9200, ext. 103.

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