Keith Bates has posted a lengthy recap of the WOMMA Summit. A good bit:
One of the things I learned, somewhat to my consternation, is that Viral Marketing, which is what I have been pursuing aggressively, is not the end-all of WOM, but in fact a subset of this awesome communications tactic. In a very well done hand-out from Greg Wester of Soapbox Marketing he makes the point that we, as WOM practitioners, need to go beyond viral marketing pointing out that VM is ?a form of marketing reliant upon the transfer of a pre-fabricated marketing message between and amongst consumers, a form of digital marketing hyped by email technology providers and advergame developers.? He goes on to say that ?the result of this confusion is that marketers wise enough to focus on improving word of mouth often unwisely limit their scope to ?viral? marketing. Word of mouth marketing includes any marketing where consumers are responsible for the message?s content and/or message distribution. ?Viral? is only one form.?
I’d even go so far as to say that WOM isn’t the end all, be all of non-traditional marketing either.
