Doubting Feasiblity of Trickle Down Disclosure

Marketer, consumer advocate and blogger at Brokerblogger, Bill Kelm, has this to say regarding my post below, WOMBAT 2 Marketers Will Learn How to Get You to Do Their Jobs.

I basically agree with all you said, but as a marketer for over 30 years, let me answer this question of yours: "The question is, if you do have a great product that organically inspires WOM, why do you need somebody on staff to spur it on?"

In the marketing community the answer has always been that while WOM is the best form of marketing, it is leaving the future of the brand in the hands (mouths) of others way too much. As you said yourself, "Sure, brand name products play a role in our daily lives, but most are not integral to our existence." So what is the solution to the challenge for marketers?

If you read Joe Chernov's, (BzzAgent's director of public relations) comment (and my response) on a blog post of mine it goes into the reasons why I believe that clear, conspicuous, complete, and comprehended disclosure throughout the total downstream is the key to making Word of Mouth Marketing ethical. It enables the consumer to know where the initial motivation came from to start the WOM, and therefore be empowered to make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to allow the manufacturer and marketer to "to Get You to Do Their Jobs". This approach is NOTHING NEW, it used to be called "consumer test marketing" or "sample surveying" where disclosure was upfront and consumer awareness of the process was complete. I'll bet that some of those people in the "sample survey" told their friends/family about the positives & negatives of the new products they would try whether they were paid participants or not. However, they were probably not encouraged to start a downstream.

I appreciate what Bill's got to say about this, but, to me, the issue of requiring disclosure throughout the engineered WOM process is a red herring. Even if the potential negative effects of marketing-induced WOM can be quelled by disclosure throughout the entire WOM chain, the fact is it would be contingent upon it actually occurring at every connection. Not only is there no way of tracking that, it's doubtful it would ever occur, especially as the original disseminator gets farther and farther away from the subsequent disseminators.

In other words, once the message about the new hair care product or energy bar moves down the line from marketing campaign to campaign participants to the first set of recipients to the next, and on and on, is message spreader number 20 or 200 or 2,000 really going to choose to disclose the fact that this is part of an orchestrated campaign, much less even know to do so?

Not bloody likely.

The Kids Are All, "Whatever"

So, I heard back from Dr. Carl regarding his assignment of SPSII to his WOM students. Evidently, to his mild chagrin (and of course, mine) not many read it. But, since it's a newly designed class, he may decide to incorporate it into the curriculum a little earlier next time when the kids are more open to discussion of ethical issues.

Either way, it's a real honor to have someone like him even give it the time of day.