Candidates in major political contests are commonly endorsed by other politicians, interest groups and celebrities. Prior to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, a celebrity with a proven track record of influencing her fans’ commercial decisions. In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sale of books Winfrey recommended as part of Oprah’s Book Club to assess whether her endorsement affected the Primary outcomes. We find her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah’s influence and Obama’s success in previous elections, nor with underlying local political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately 1,000,000 additional votes for Obama.

The full paper (with lots of cool equations) can be found HERE.

Disclaimer: the point of this post was to simply address the level of influence certain personalities have over consumers and is not an endorsement of any particular party or candidate

Most everyone we talk to understands the need and importance for word of mouth but since it’s still a relatively new marketing tactic there is a learning curve to tackle. Some of the first issues a marketer is faced with are:

• Should it be a long-term or short-term strategy?
• Should it involve influencers or average consumers from an internal database?
• Should the execution occur online, offline or both?
• How should success be measured? (Sales, conversations, conversation reach, change in Net Promoter Score?)

A recent Forrester report does a good job in helping brands understand what tactics and metrics are best utilized by individual departments (marketing, sales, research, etc.). Approaching it from the brand’s point of view makes it much easier to digest and see the opportunities.

In the same vein I wanted to share my view of the WOM industry, specific to the agencies segment. WOM agencies typically follow one of the following models:

• WOM Agency – Media Model: Brand leases access to the agency’s network of influencers, delivers quick hit, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency – Influencer Model: Agency specializes in identifying and sourcing influencers, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency – CRM Model: Agency specializes in sourcing participants from client database, delivers more organic word of mouth, typically long term duration.

One of the tenets of facilitating WOM with consumers is to ‘make it easy’; we in the industry should take that same principal in helping brands understand the various options available within WOM marketing.