More case studies here.

Total spending on WoM marketing is expected to increase 10.2% to $1.70 billion in 2009 and grow at a CAGR of 14.5% during the 2008-2013 period, reaching $3.04 billion as more brands include WoM in their media mix and ROI metrics improve.

Other Key Highlights:

• "Spending on U.S. word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing increased 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008, as brands recognized the need to get involved in consumer and business conversations and allocate resources to WoM. Spending increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.6% from 2003 to 2008. "

• "Spending on WoM content and services increased 13.0% to $1.26 billion in 2008, as major marketers integrated WoM into the media mix and shifted to specialized WoM firms that help drive long-term campaigns. Spending rose at a 37.3% CAGR of 37.3% from 2003 to 2008. "

• "Spending on WoM ancillary products increased 19.7% to $286 million in 2008, due to growing demand for return-on-investment (ROI) data and the impact of WoM campaigns on consumer purchasing behavior. Growth can also be attributed to the increasing sophistication of WoM tools that are being used to monitor online and offline conversations. Spending grew at a CAGR of 39.1% from 2003 to 2008. "

Who's Investing in WOM?

According to the study, consumer product goods (CPGs) companies are the major adopters of WoM, accounting for 17.4% of spending in 2008. Other top categories include food & drink, finance & business-to-business services, electronics & telecommunications, and retail (they note that auto & transportation would have been in the top five if not for their industry's recent financial woes and cuts in spending).

Shift in Consumer Behavior

Not really a surprise here, but the study notes/validates that consumers are abandoning traditional and ad-supported media, migrating to digital and consumer-supported media.

For more information (or to purchase the report), click here.

These Vintage Prints feature iconic, greater outdoors inspired scenes and are available to consumers at no cost via their community site Blaze the Trail.

Recently, one of these posters found a new, large home on the Beverly Boulevard between Gardner and North Vista Streets in Los Angeles. The Moose, the first ever Consumers Choice Vintage Print (conceptualized by and voted to victory by consumers), will be hanging out proudly there apologizing to LA'ers for the horrible delays in traffic through the week of May 4th.

While we are happy to see this awesome artwork displayed anywhere loud and proud, the fact the Moose was the consumer-selected winner of a consumer-generated content contest is near and dear to our marketing hearts.  Consumers are open to always submit their creative visions for the next Redwood Creek Vintage Print, and we are always sifting through the ideas narrowing down finalists for the next time that we will nominate a few to face off, with the winner getting printed and distributed to consumers, for free.

Note: The Moose won't be available online to grab for your wall  until the end of May. But we do hope you'll pick one up then.

Affinitive is happy to announce that we have submitted an entry for our work with E.&J. Gallo Winery and their Redwood Creek brand in the "Talking" category.

We're not exactly sure how the judging criteria works, but they are allowing the general public to rate and review each entry. Please check out our submission, and post a review/rating! And if you would like to learn more about how Affinitive is helping E.&J. Gallo "blaze the trail", drop us a line!

Tapping into their 20,000+ member Hokage's Room enthusiast community, members were invited to complete a survey and provide feedback on 6 designs as well as how the designs reflected key attributes of the game, were memorable, eye-catching, and would make them more interested in learning more about the game. In just a few days, 1,100 members provided feedback and the results were sent off to NAMCO BANDAI Games' marketing team - check out the winning "official art" chosen by members!

JCPenney recently launched an app on Facebook called Dorm Life. It's targeted to college freshmen, and although this is a major portion of Facebook's demographic and the app is well executed, it doesn't seem to be doing well. It allows users to put pictures of JCPenney products on their profiles and suffers from what can be called the "free ad" mentality. Unfortunately, people will not flock to put something on their profiles just because YOU care about it. People will put something on their profile because it provides value to THEM.

Flirting is definitely something of value to the Facebook demographic, and an app for Calvin Klein call In2U would seem have tapped this perfectly in allowing users to anonymously flirt with each other. However, a basic premise alone is not enough; the details of the execution always matter and this app is clumsily made. Despite all the communication channels available through the Facebook API, there is an awkward requirement to know a friend's external email in order to flirt with them and for them to notice a strange generic email received amongst all the other spam as something intriguing to act upon. Thus, any viral growth from friend to friend is severly hindered.

At least these apps tried to create something specifically tailored to the social networking environment. More often than not, the expedient course is to take the "round peg in square hole" approach and repackage pre-existing content from something completely unrelated into something vaguely resembling an application. This is what ABC did by taking widgets for its popular shows like Ugly Betty and allowing people to put them on their profiles. They are just pushed content and contain nothing in them that makes social media powerful. No personalization, no communication with friends, no user generated content, no interaction between people at all.

One can only imagine all the conference calls and PowerPoint presentations that went into creating these apps. It's a shame that so much money and the time of so many otherwise talented and intelligent people could be spent on creating products so boring and useless. Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm in corporate America. Occasionally, however, a gem manages to make its way through the maze of cubicles and quarterly reports.

This is the case with an application called Parking Wars, which was created for an A&E show of the same name. Rather than taking the obvious route of aggregating clips and news from the show into something that no one would care about, they instead produced a thematically related game in which people park cars on each others' profiles. It utilizes many of the hooks provided by Facebook to create an engaging social activity that allows people to have fun with their friends. Oh, and the show probably got a lot of promotion from it too.

So says Andy Sernovitz (the founding CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association) in this iMediaConnection article, where he gives some nice props to our work for Square Enix. Andy also talks about the The Five Ts of Word-of-Mouth Marketing - components that any successful word of mouth campaign shares:

Talkers: find the people who like to talk
Are they your customers? Neighborhood moms? Doctors? Bloggers? Think about the people who are most likely to tell a friend about what you're doing. Make sure they know about your new topic of conversation.

Topics: give them a reason to talk
Give people a reason to talk about you. It doesn’t need to be fancy. A special sale, good service, a cool, new feature, a better flavor, a funny package. (Remember the Gateway computers that came in cow-patterned boxes?)

Tools: help the message spread faster and further
Do everything you can to make it easy for talkers to pass along your topic. Include postcards and stickers in the box when you ship a package. Put up a chat room so people can talk to each other. Join a blog conversation. Hand out samples. (Did you ever get one of those emails with a "secret" coupon that was supposedly for employees only? Did you forward it?)

Taking part: join the conversation
Conversations die out when there’s only one person talking. When people are talking about you, answer them. Reply to their emails. Comment on blogs that write about you. Send a lot of thank-you notes.

Tracking: measure and understand what people are saying
The word-of-mouth conversation is the best feedback you’re ever going to get. It’s far better than any other kind of market research because it is the authentic voice of the consumer. Hear what people are saying, learn from it and use it to be a better company.

Read this Book!
If you haven't already, I highly recommend you get a copy of Andy's new book, "Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking," which is a great guide full of ideas on implementing successful word of mouth programs, regardless if you are a major brand or a mom-and-pop restaurant.

see also:

iMedia Connection: Chrysler, Coke: New Brand Buzz Leaders
Square Enix: Slime Knights case study