WOMMA's Womnibus #2.19
- Yahoo! Creates 'Brand Universes' to Benefit from Buzz
- Pilot Program Gets Women Talking About Cancer
- Krystal Engages Brand Evangelists with New Site
- Anti-Smoking Effort 'Infects' via Word of Mouth
- Briefly:
The Power of Opinions, Finding Connected Customers
 Tell a friend: http://www.womma.org/tell/
1> Yahoo! Creates 'Brand Universes'
to Benefit from Buzz
Hoping to seize on consumers' enthusiasm for their favorite companies, Yahoo! has announced plans to partner with "passion brands" in order to drive sustained traffic to its social media properties, including Flickr and Del.icio.us. Yahoo! has hand-picked a list of 100 brands for which it will build "brand universes." As Yahoo!'s take on branded social media, these universes will function as dedicated areas within Yahoo.com where fans of a product can congregate to share news, links, user-generated content, and more. The first such universe was launched in November for Nintendo's Wii gaming system at wii.yahoo.com.
Unlike their branded counterparts on MySpace and YouTube, advertisers do not have to pay for their Yahoo! destinations. Instead, Yahoo! is creating them free of charge -- an enterprising way to benefit from traffic generated by other companies' positive word of mouth.
Learn more
2> Pilot Program Gets Women Talking
About Cancer
The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has announced a new weapon in its fight against breast and cervical cancers: word of mouth. Taking its cue from a successful campaign tested in the United States several years ago, CCS will launch a pilot program this year in northeastern Ontario called the Lay Health Educator Project, which it hopes will encourage more women to get screened for cancer. Through the test program, CCS will recruit approximately 30 local women in order to train them in cancer awareness. Those women will become lay health educators, charged with encouraging their family, friends, and co-workers to undergo mammography breast exams and pap tests for early cancer detection. If successful, the program will join several others like it as proof that word of mouth can sell anything -- even survival.
Learn more
3> Krystal Engages Brand Evangelists
with New Site
Krystal has featured its brand evangelists in TV commercials, viral videos, and even in a special customer Hall of Fame. Now, the burger chain is putting them front-and-center in an online community that it has launched for "Krystal Lovers" at www.krystal.com. The Krystal Lovers Lounge will function as a social networking site for the company's biggest fans and will feature customer profiles, message boards, viral videos, and exclusive video game trailers and downloads. According to the company, more than 2,000 users have already registered since the site's informal launch last August, thanks mostly to word of mouth. Krystal plans to use its member list for email marketing and says that the site will afford it a unique opportunity to interact with and learn more about its most avid customers.
Learn more
4> Anti-Smoking Effort 'Infects' via
Word of Mouth
The American Legacy Foundation (ALF) is taking its popular "Infect truth" ad campaign to online social networks, where it hopes a young audience will receive its anti-smoking message and spread it. Last month, ALF began posting "Truth" branded wallpaper, bumper stickers, birthday cards, Sony PlayStation case covers, and more to sites such as MySpace, Hi5, Bebo, Piczo, and Xanga, all featuring the tagline, "Knowledge is contagious: Infect truth." ALF hopes users will use forward-to-a-friend technology to send such content to their peers, vastly extending the campaign's reach. With a declining budget, the organization is trying to make its marketing dollars go farther by investing in word of mouth, which it says is more affordable, more accessible, and more effective. It also happens to be more popular among its target audience -- teens -- making it a smart choice for a socially-savvy campaign.
Learn more
5> Briefly:
The Power of Opinions, Finding
Connected Customers
WSJ: Customer Reviews Can Drive Sales
Author Keith Ferrazzi on Finding 'Super-Connectors'
Learn more
|
|
Back to newsletter list
