Word of Mouth Marketing

Presented by Umbria I caught the very end of this session. It looked like an interesting topic and one of the key points in the wrap up comments was this nugget:

"It does not matter if a rumour is true. What matters is the momentum behind the message." What this points to is the need for organizations to become increasingly transparent and to engage in the conversation. Controlling the conversation no longer works. All you can do is recognize what is being discussed and acknowledge it. JetBlue's recent weather-related debacle could have been a major Public Relations failure for the company. Instead they used the Social networking tools and put their apology out there. They then let the crowd take over the conversation. The net effect was that JetBlue ended up with very positive PR from a bad situation.