Jack Trout Says Advertising Trumps Word of Mouth

Many moons ago, Jack Trout, was one of the most successful advertising guys on earth. In the current issue of Forbes, he writes that Word of Mouth is nothing new, and I absolutely agree. But he misses the point big-time because he thinks the way to control a message is with advertising. And that used to be true. In 1955.

Word of mouth has been around since people started interacting. Cave men left messages on the wall, John the Baptist was the advance man for Jesus. And of course there was Samuel Adams, P.T. Barnum and Edward Bernays. They were "influencers" who tried to get people to change their behavior in some way.

The Bad Old Days
But these WOM pioneers lived before the Internet age and the rise of citizen journalism. They practiced their craft in the old days, before people could read online customer complaint sites or see what bloggers around the globe think about an issue, or do a Google search for customers' product reviews, complaints and ratings.

Says Trout:

"Buzz can kill you if you don't have the right product. ... You've got to have a product or service people want to talk about in a positive way, and there aren't many of these around."

"Now for the really bad news. There's no way to control that word-of-mouth. Do I want to give up control and let consumers take over my campaign? No way. They aren't getting paid based on how many widgets get sold. If I go to all this trouble developing a positioning strategy for my product, I want to see that message delivered."

Hellooooo. Mr Trout. Have you heard of the Internet? Millions of people have turned to it for news and information because they were sick of companies trying to control the message. Have you heard of Tivo? It was invented to help consumers avoid the controlled message. Have you noticed blogs?

Trout warns, correctly, "And mouths can stop talking about you in a heartbeat once something else comes along to talk about." Welcome to the Internet Age Mr Trout. Copyright BL Ochman

Wow. Trout's been out of the water too long. Starting to stink. ;)

With people like Tom Foremski starting to chat up ideas like "The Conversation Age" it is surprising to read about this kind of wrong-headedness from a professional communicator, eh?

What do you expect? The column was in FORBES. They simply don't get new media. They're too busy Blog bashing

B.L. you've got a friend that said it perfectly:
The Madison Avenue's Cube Dweller's job is to convince the client that it's 1990. Middle Management's job is to convince the client that that it's 1970. Senior Management's job is to convince the client that it's 1950. -Hugh MacLeod

When Mr. Trout says: "You just can't buy mouths the way you can buy media.", that is hopefully true, and the whole point of "WOM"!

He needs to read up on "Concurrence Marketing" by Yankelovich Parners = http://www.concurrencemarketing.com/ A collaborative communication between marketer and consumer is marketing's mandate now. This gives the consumer the power and reciprocity they demand.