FEB 2009 - New Zealand Marketing Association Launch Global First
70 of New Zealand’s business leaders attended the global launch of the first ever Word of Mouth Marketing Experiment this morning. The idea for the experiment arose from a partnership between the New Zealand Marketing Association and The Village Square. Supported by international word of mouth commentators Andy Sernovitz and Joseph Jaffe.
New Zealand Marketing Association Chief Executive, Sue McCarty, believes the New Zealand business community have been presented with a unique opportunity.
“Word of mouth marketing offers a valuable business tool which is cost effective, channel agnostic and can be applied to the activities of businesses of all sizes and stages of evolution.
Through this experiment we can build a practical and very public case study of word of mouth marketing.”
It will be fascinating to learn how new concepts in the business community spread, how fast and by whom”.
Word of mouth marketing may be more commonly understood as referral marketing. While most companies would agree that referrals are incredibly valuable and cost effective, they are far too often taken for granted and little is done to learn how to best effect them.
Richard Stevens, Global Marketing Services Manager of Fisher & Paykel Appliances attended the launch and says “word of mouth messages are the most trusted, they cut through the clutter. It’s an irony that this was the only way of communicating before media began and word of mouth has never been more relevant than it is now, in a time of fragmented media - it is perhaps the most potent media of all?”
The Experiment has been launched in New Zealand and will be replicated by Marketing Association s globally. The Experiment involves reading Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz, sharing opinions online and passing the book onto someone else. Participants will be able to track the location of their book online and will see how fellow business leaders around the world respond to the book and best practice principles of word of mouth marketing.
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