Joe on his WOMP blog, has a nice straightforward summary of some of the benefits of having a blog, here. 

The key ones that I would call out as the strongest, the relative importance is up to you and how you approach your blog, are

Some facts and figures thanks to the New York Times, from this article

Summary: Smart marketers are redeploying budget away from Mass (especially) TV advertising

NY Times quote …
Advertisers as a group are indeed rethinking how they use their money, according to data from TNS Media Intelligence, which tracks ad spending in major United States media.

Broadcast television commercials, for example, accounted for 17.2 percent of all ad spending in 2001. Last year, that figure fell to 16.5 percent. Newspapers’ share has slipped to 19.7 percent from 20.4 percent.

Certain big advertisers have redeployed with particular force.

Johnson & Johnson cut its share of spending on broadcast commercials to 37.8 percent last year, from 46.1 percent in 2001, increasing its allocations for syndicated TV and the Internet.

Microsoft nearly halved its broadcast TV allocation, to 16 percent last year, from 30.7 percent in 2001, while increasing the Web’s share to 31.5 percent, from 14.1 percent.

(Jan o5) Wired interviewed Jeff Bezos about some of the decisions he made when building Amazon.  Full piece here

Right at the end they touch on what Jeff thinks the future holds for the traditional approach of spending a lot on shouting about your product.

Jeff says …

"About three years ago we stopped doing television advertising. We did a 15-month-long test of TV advertising in two markets – Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis – to see how much it drove our sales. And it worked, but not as much as the kind of price elasticity we knew we could get from taking those ad dollars and giving them back to consumers. So we put all that money into lower product prices and free shipping. That has significantly accelerated the growth of our business.

Is this a trend?
Yes, more and more money will go into making a great customer experience, and less will go into shouting about the service. Word of mouth is becoming more powerful. If you offer a great service, people find out.

In the magazine world, we rely on ads. Should we be terrified?
I’m not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that’s going to invert."

As a consumer I think we all look forward to the day when the money brands waste with agencies is spend on making a better product!

NOP World came to see me yesterday, and we shared lots of common ground about the status of word of mouth marketing in Asia.

In case you had not heard of them, NOP World are a global top 10 market research business with an excellent pedigree, and are thought leaders in many fields

Given this, check out this quote from their brochure …

“There’s a word of mouth revolution underway. Today more than ever before, consumers are looking to each other for recommendations that guide their decisions on everything from what to buy to where to invest and to which web site to visit.

The relative impact of traditional media has fallen precipitously. Roper Reports™ surveys show that more than 90% of consumers now cite word of mouth as the best source of ideas and information about products and services – placing nearly x2 as much value of these personal recommendations as on advertising or editorial messages.”

Once global market researchers talk about it you can bet that this is a solid and real trend, and one that you should be on top of.

Remember, that one of the criticisms levelled at word of mouth is that it can take a while to grow, which means that if you wait to see if your competitor is using it successfully – by the time you notice, it will be too late for you to respond.

Should you not be investigating word of mouth for your brand? Here’s a suggestion, divert just a small fraction of your media budget to begin to explore this topic, this year.

In USA Today they cover the efforts of Wendy’s (whose last ad campaigns fizzled and failed to produce any major impact) and Ansheuser Busch (fighting declining category use and stiff competition) to use Word of Mouth

Both are trying to use a viral tactic where they create a message so entertaining that people will want to pass it on to their friends – some call this “word of mouse”.

They would love to emulate the success of pieces of content such as JibJabs’s “My Land” US president election spoof which reached 80 million people – at no (media) cost.

Personally, I feel that this is an attempt to subvert the true nature of word of mouth phenomenon ie where people recommend your product, rather than your advert.  My point being that you may go to Subservient Chicken site and enjoy making the man in a chicken suit hop on one leg – but will it achieve the same as having your friend turn round to you and ask “Have you tried one of those Burger King Chicken Burgers? – they are awesome!”  I don’t think so.

In fact, it has the sniff of “ad agency” to me .. spending money on creating the content rather than spending it on the experience. 

Check else where on this blog for “Tall Tim – the Nudie CEO”’s take on this  (Get Nudie), or Jeff Bezzos’s of Amazon’s (Power of Passionate Customers)