Offline word-of-mouth impression drives at least 5 times – and up to as much as 100 times – more sales – than a paid advertising impression. Thus, it pays for brands to create advertising campaigns that get people talking.
This isn’t as easy as it seems. If it were, both brands and agencies would be consistently successful. But brands and agencies that build “creating buzz” directly into creative process itself find they can more reliably drive conversation with their campaigns.
One agency that does this exceedingly well is CP+B Group, whose co-founder and Chairman, Chuck Porter, spoke at the PR Summit hosted by the Holmes Report last fall.
The war is over. #PR won. Inspiring thoughts from Chuck Porter about the power of what we do. #PRSummit pic.twitter.com/joLywjpA3A
— Elise Mitchell (@elisemitch) October 27, 2015
After pointing out that “PR is typically better than advertising at really manipulating popular culture…and popular culture is currency,” he went on to say that his agency wants to think “more like a PR agency than a traditional ad agency.”
“We believe in trying to make news. People are interested in news; they are not interested in advertising. We have never started with advertising,” Porter told the crowd.
This type of thinking aligns with what we’ve learned from our own research and studies conducting with some of our partners, which confirm a linkage between TV ad exposure and word of mouth. (To learn more, be sure to sign up for the Advertising Research Foundation Re!Think conference in March. Engagement Labs Chief Research Officer Brad Fay will be there to share our latest insights about “Driving Effectiveness with Talkworthy Advertising.”)
When working on our book, “The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace,” we were able to get an inside look at how CP+B achieves this kind of word of mouth.
CP+B has created a disciplined approach to make sure that word of mouth is built into the very fabric of its creative process, something many creative ad agencies have historically struggled with.
“Talkworthiness” figures heavily in CP+B ideas. That means it’s not enough to make a great TV spot that picks up awards. Greatness is achieved only when an ad infiltrates culture, earning press mentions, getting pickup in social media, and making it to the water cooler or locker room.
The notion that an idea can — and should — spark conversation, or even create culture, doesn’t often enter the picture in most creative ad campaigns, at least not traditionally.
But how do you organize your company to create these kinds of ideas? First, it’s CP+B’s structure and processes that differentiates it from many other creative ad agencies. First and foremost, CP+B benefits from a tight, integrated structure in which digital, PR, experiential marketing, and word of mouth are all built into the very crafting of the idea.
At CP+B, the process also requires that the creative team comes up with WOM-friendly ideas. They do this by adding a twist to the typical creative department briefing process. When a copywriter and an art director receive a creative assignment, they’re asked to submit their ideas in the form of a press release, thus forcing them to think about whether an idea might get media pickup at its origin.
In the process of doing this, they are also framing the idea in a way that consumers will likely talk about the ideas too. The elements of a story that make it “newsworthy” have much in common with what will also be “talkworthy.” After all, press coverage and word of mouth are both “earned” forms of media, in which the story or idea has to earn an article or a conversation.
The CP+B approach offers a few lessons. First, it’s important to note that there is a very media-agnostic approach in play. CP+B resists the temptation to put the medium — TV, digital, print — before the idea itself. This extends to social media.
Second, this process inverts the usual way that brands attempt to get their new marketing ideas to the public. In most cases, the writing of the press release comes not only after the idea has been crafted and approved but also after the ads have been produced and are set to air, rendering that all-important outreach not much more than an afterthought.
This way of thinking can leave a PR team with the futile task of trying to publicize an inherently nonnewsworthy idea. The CP+B approach heads off that problem. Press-friendliness is a hurdle cleared at the outset — a good way of ensuring that the ads don’t die a quiet death with no one talking about them.
The CP+B agency is the modern master of the art and science of word-of-mouth advertising. It did not invent the practice, but it is the first to succeed in doing so, and over a significant span of time.
