Amway Global.com - Official Site of Amway Global / Quixtar Inc.
Word Of Mouth
Friday, July 07, 2006
As I mentioned last week, I recently attended a Word Of Mouth Marketing Association conference in San Francisco, called WOMBAT2.  Desipite the somewhat silly name (short for Word of Mouth Basic Training), it was a rich conference in terms of content.  Preeminent corporate blogger Robert Scoble and his Naked Conversations co-author Shel Israel were among the keynote speakers.  Frankly, their presentation was a little lame because all they did was recount the story of how he broke down barriers as a Microsoft blogger and started Channel 9.  Not that it's not a fascinating story; I just wish they'd shared more practical tips and best practices.  Also, because both of them shared a 45-minute timeslot, they kind of fought for the spotlight.

Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz, also presented and he was excellent.  He talked a lot about different ways buzz is generated in the marketplace and how companies or organizations can create it.  The primary way, of course, is to have a noteworthy product for people to talk about!

Other speakers included Jackie Huba, author of Creating Customer Evangelists, Paul Rand, Global Chief Development and Innovation Officer for Ketchum, Clark Benson, CEO of eCRUSH, Greg Thompson, Director of Communications for IBM, Pinny Gniwisch, VP-Marketing for Ice.com, John Bell, EVP/Creative Director at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, and many, many more.

It was a fascinating conference in other ways as well. So many of the people I talked to acknowledged Quixtar and Amway as pioneers and leaders in Word of Mouth Marketing. I was half expecting people to question why we would be interested in WOMMA, given that traditionally our "industry" was direct selling. I realize now, however, that the word-of-mouth efforts of IBOs over the past several decades have generated the kind of results that have more traditional marketing companies excited. They understand the power of the personal connections made by people like Quixtar's IBOs, and they understand that word-of-mouth can be a much more effective way to generate sales. Many complained that word-of-mouth didn't get the kind of budget it deserved, with corporate leaders still entrenched in traditional advertising.

I guess that's why Quixtar's word-of-mouth has been successful. We reward those spreading our message -- Quixtar IBOs. That's not easy for other traditional companies to do. You can't spend that heavily on advertising AND reward people enough to share your product or opportunity with their friends and family.  This goes back to Quixtar's founding, when the decision was made that we wouldn't advertise.  I believe we will be doing some ads pretty soon, to generate higher awareness of the Quixtar brand, but the rewards we pay IBOs will still constitute the majority of our marketing spend. That's good news for IBOs!  Hope you have a great weekend!


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