Extend your "fifteen minutes of fame"

Ketchum has announced that one of its subdivisions, Zocalo Group, will open this week. Zocalo is a new company devoted towards word of mouth (WOM) advertising for companies and businesses looking for an addition to their traditional advertising. Literally, a Zocalo is a leisurely area that comforts people to visit, relax, and enjoy great conversation with one another. In essence, that is what the Zocalo group is attempting to create and maintain. They want your company to capitalize on your most important customers, or the evangelists as they say.

The group's equation for success is simple:
Impress customers with your product/service and they will become natural advocates of your brand and will be willing to share the word (Organic WOM). Then, amplify these feelings of sharing messages through strategic and efficient marketing campaigns (Amplified WOM). Put these two together and you have Organic WOM + Amplified WOM= Sustainable WOM).

After looking at the numbers, it is easy to persuade yourself to believe in this methodology. I cannot help but agree with this company, along with several other professionals of the past, when they say that WOM can be the most successful form of promotion/advertising available. To harness the power of trust, credibility, believability, and persuasion between you, your customers, and their peers, can be a powerful tool. I have been a firm believer in WOM and find myself easily persuaded by my friends and family when it comes to purchases. Nearly all of my products/services, besides clothing, comes from recommendations from others around me.

My impressions of this subdivision are quite positive. I feel like more firms/agencies should take advantage of these opportunities within controlling WOM and increasing your message sharing abilities. As for their implementation of their strategy and delivery, I again stand impressed. Their helpful model and extensive customer categorizing shows promising dedication that they will seem to be following.

My only concern, and skeptical outlook, is that I believe it will be very difficult to measure the success of specific Word of Mouth advertising. Though they stress their advantage and capability of measuring their results specifically, I have yet to find their approach to doing so. In my opinion/experience, WOM is very effective, yet nearly impossible to measure. Of course the use of surveys and questionnaires can help this problem, however, I am interested to see if Zocalo has other ideas.

Check out more background information here