The Time Scale of Word of Mouth - What's the Shelf Life of Your Buzz?

This diagram and text are taken from the Buzz Canuck blog. The full post can be found here. It is interesting to see how powerful experiential marketing can be. When executed correctly it can help promote customer evangelism.

Experiential marketing - providing a transforming and immersive experience for a fan, customer or influencer, typically in the form of an event - lasting impressions of what the brand stands for and who it attracts may have ongoing attraction for participants (as only 10% believe they ever receive a positive customer experience anyway, this can come as a nice surprise), however, given experiential nature - feelings and memories do wane off over time unless repeated

Relevant occasions where used: where full scale experience can't be provided to all prospects (automobile sampling), creation of lifestyle brand/sentiment, affiliation with lifestyle property or values and where customers or fans like to congregate offline for entertainment, information, aesthetic enjoyment or escape


Customer Evangelism - the nirvana of brands seeking community strength - customer evangelism and zealotry, where oftentimes organization of this form of word of mouth is hosted by the fans themselves not the company (Ikea positive fanatics, Apple fans ) - this is truly the area where lifetime value of the customer plays a role as brand loyalty and affinity can span decades - obviously, from an orchestrated word of mouth approach - this takes year over year investment, company-wide embrace of customer/community centricity and dedicated resources to incubate sustainable enthusiasm

Relevant occasions where used: where the customer experience is so good, where a strong trust bond has been built up between brand and customer, premium and/or well-differentiated brands, brands with a strong point of view and experience that lives it, where employees are as big in the brand as most rabid customers

So as the women bar owner in the Blue Brothers movie responds to the question- "so what kind of music do you have here? Oh we have both kinds, country and western". I find word of mouth is considerably more discriminating and variety-driven.