There are a few questions I get asked at every conference and meeting.   “How can we prove that WoM works?”   and “ WoM is slow isn’t it?”

Lets examine using a recent event …

“How can we prove that WoM works?”
We’ll how about this as a way of answering … pitch WoM against a fully funded Ad Campaign professionally run by a big trusted brand with a decent spend against it.  If a WoM campaign can stop the campaign in its tracks and get it pulled – surely that is proof that WoM works.

J&J had done all their research – moms often got back pain from carrying their babies. Good creative nicely executed – see it here

BUT, some moms felt that the copy … “a good kinda pain” and the “makes me look like an official mom” was not to their liking.

So they launched an anti-campaign campaign. No budget – just WoM.

To use the boxing analogy “Seconds out, ding ding, round one”  Big brand ad campaign vs a few moms with their noses out of joint about some of the copy.

Well the result is a K.O. J&J had to pull the ad off the air. Their “brand equity”, the efforts of the ad agency, their PR agency, nor the $millions committed to the campaign  .. none of that could overpower the effect of the WoM.

Conclusion: a multi-million dollar ad campaign lost out to a WoM campaign.

“ WoM is slow isn’t it?”
48 hours is all it took for the WoM campaign to get the TVC pulled …. I bet it took more than 48 hours to make the TVC .. which looks slow to you?

Read the details here

UPDATE: wow, less than 24hrs later the spoofs appear. This one (about the trend for moms to get fake boobs)  has gatherered almost 10,000 views in its first day.