Web2.0 vs. Word-Of-Mouth vs. Marketing
Have you figured out what exactly Web2.0 actually is?
Web2.0 is the most popular misspelling of the word VANITY…
– the moment people can contribute to an online space and, directly (e.g. Facebook) or indirectly (e.g. dig.com or MyBlogLog) build their own profile you are talking social media and things two-point-oh. Luckily it does go beyond the school-yard puddle like mutual admiration society culture that at first sight might appear to be the stuff of that other buzzword, increasingly flaunted with so much glee; User Generated Content or UCG for short.
For a really good example of potential and scale of the web2.0 user centered paradigm consider that the volunteer authored Wikipedia boasts 8.2 million articles in 253 languages (it sais so itself, I’m not going to count). Regardless of the rhetoric you may encounter around its accuracy, reliability and biases – that’s a whole lot of effort and collaboration you are looking at.
But what does it mean for marketing?
I’m no marketing guru but I think anyone can see that this Web 2.0 thing can facilitate ‘viral' and/or ‘word-of-mouth' marketing and indeed currently much attention from innovators, speculators and the inevitable snake-oil peddlers in our industry portals is congregating around the promise of effective marketing through the medium of online video.
The formal avenues for driving, managing and importantly measuring this kind of marketing are as far as I know still very much in flux and undefined, and in some respects perhaps down-right suspect.
On the informal side of the scene there has been mixed results achieved by applying various hybrid marketing models. The obvious route is perhaps to try and transfer those other phantoms of the marketing genre, Word-Of-Mouth and Viral advertising into the Web2.0 context with a bit of New-Media pizzazz from video or audio pod-casting. Incentivizing consumers to generate advertising for you through for example competitions for the funniest or best consumer generated add uploaded to a video sharing site seems to make a lot of sense. B.M.W is one advertiser who has implemented a few different guises of this strategy but there has also been a fair bit of skepticism around the actual value returned e.g. http://iplot.typepad.com/iplot/2006/05/bmw_says_no.html,
Me thinks the magic that can be achieved lies in the ‘mix’ – treating social media as a ‘through-the-line' auxiliary avenue for brand promotion and marketing.
First and foremost though, I think it is worth making sure you are covering the basics, have a strategy to monitor the web2.0 world of forums and blogs and actively scanning and possibly engaging in the ‘conversations' regarding your brand that naturally emerges.
You may want to apply the three ‘L’s: listen, learn and leverage.
From there it’s all about angle, timing skill and tenacity of your team.
Somehow the Red Bull Flugtag game comes to mind… 
