"Word of mouth"

There is something about the commercial world (of which we are a part) that makes it block out any thought which does not entail the spending or earning of money. So while we can talk about 'low cost' ways of marketing, we understand very little of 'zero cost' ways of marketing.Not because they don't exist, but because our corporate mind allows thoughts in, only if they carry the gate pass of money.

Years ago, one vividly recalls, entering office to see a huddle of colleagues engaged in excitable conversation early in the morning. The subject under discussion was that all over the country, our lovable elephant headed god Ganesh was drinking milk! This merits not one but several exclamation marks, if the event indeed did happen. But this story is not about whether it happened or not, but about its rapid propagation and its seeming anonymous authorship. It is almost miraculous that someone (how can there ever be multiple authors of the same myth at precisely the same time) started the tale about Ganesh that early morning (couldn't have been the previous night, because at least someone should have mentioned it then) and by the time one reached office everyone in office and in fact everyone in every office in this vast nation of a billion hearts and minds, knew the tale by heart, with no distortion as one should normally expect in Chinese whispers.
Imagine a car being launched this way.
One zero cost whisper and 100% awareness.

Even the redoubtable question of whether one is reaching a sharply defined target audience is redundant simply because in this case one is actually reaching all!The commercial world, on the other hand, somehow ends up at the wrong end of the stick. In the late 80s, LML Vespa opened bookings for the 'Vespa XE' scooter. This was India's first 100cc scooter (many consumers don't know what is 'cc' about a scooter and yet it matters!) which established a world record in the sheer number of bookings made. Consumers paid Rs 500 for the booking and in the next few days all hell broke loose. Rumours flew far and wide from mouth to ear across the vast geography of this hungry consumerist nation (that's how it was for scooters then, just in case you don't know because you didn't exist then or were perhaps not even thought of!)) that this 100 cc scooter was unsuitable for twin riding (the pillion seat of the scooter was then the main reason to buy one and perhaps still is). Who started this story (again can't be simultaneous authors) and one doubts that Bajaj Auto could have gone so far, especially since while LML thought Bajaj was competition, Bajaj had no clue! The cancellations in the scooter bookings was another world record. And a rumour started it all.

Then in 1984 as the body of Indira Gandhi lay riddled with bullets at AIIMS in Delhi, even buses stopped as the driver braked on hearing the news. The news was near simultaneous (need I stress the size of the nation once again). The country came to a grinding halt. It's crippling and paralytic sense of shock is but one part of the tale, with the miraculous propagation of the news being the other. One thing is certain. That the news entered the idiot box after one had already heard it in what is jargonistically called 'word of mouth'.

Some of us have of course had the default vision of starting life before dotcoms began, so that we always know the difference! The experience of the world before emails and dotcom and the world thereafter is not just about the simple insight of institutionalising organisational politics through technology enablers like the bcc button or the tendency of pretending to talk to the 'To' while actually talking to the 'cc', on which we will surely cover ground in some other post in this blog very soon. But this time it's about how all of a sudden without seeing a single ad anywhere we started opening yahoo.com to search something (and now anything! it is now moved to window shopping! on this in some other issue of know-your-brand). And then one day someone told us about google and also told us it was better, though google did not once tell us so and still hasn't! We weren't able to decode this word of mouth phenomenon, so like we always do, we gave it a new name! Another matter, we still don't understand it.

Now we call it 'viral marketing', but it remains laboured and lacks the power of the word of mouth.In the 90s, an excited (urbanised) India awaited the entry of foreign brands with bated breadth, minus much knowledge about them, but many of then failed. They assumed strong 'word of mouth' about their famous selves unmindful of the fact, that their fame was confined to the white parts of the world which were suspected of being blessed with cold weather. So in came International Tourister and no one lined up for it. And in came Pepsi with Remo Fernandes on TV strumming a guitar wildly and screaming "Open Up! Open UP" to a stubborn bottle of Pepsi on the table. And presto, it finally did open! The trouble however, was a simple one. While the Pepsi team celebrated this high decibel launch, the consumer wondered why Remo couldn't have used an opener instead! So with the commercial world on the other hand, even high decibel high cost stuff appears vain and shallow to consumers who can't fathom what the commotion is about.Because somewhere it seems that something that is free (Google) or something that will help (Ganesh) or something that is poignant and calamitous (Indira Gandhi - in life and in death), or something who is talked about but not talks for himself, fits the bill better for word of mouth.Consider this.

All our religion is passed into our ears through the mouths of well meaning grandmothers (even parents lack the seniority). The messenger's credibility, good intentions and selflessness (an atheist would add: the recipients innocence!) power the word of mouth, without which it has no engine, no motor, no wings. And in the commercial world luxury brands enjoy a jaw dropping reputation for no fathomable reason, but then their price is often behind the pretense one launches while displaying awareness about them. Some inane words are heard "Oh man! Louis Vitton bags are quite something!" The grey hair on marketing heads have learnt to interpret this as a pricing story.

A powerful word of mouth is not necessarily about the cause, which in turn is about collective wisdom. It can also be about the effect which given it's singular authorship can very well be, the case of talented and individualistic fraud.

One shudders to think what would be the word of mouth consequences if google and gmail were to crash one day!
But on this, not next time.
In fact, not anytime.