Walter Carl, word-of-mouth marketeer, lanceert ChatThreads, welke als doel heeft een standaard te bieden voor het meten van de effecten van word-of-mouth marketing. Het bedrijf is opgericht in samenwerking met de Northeastern University en BzzAgent.

In plaats van het meten van het aantal mensen die een onderwerp bespreken, wil Carl met de standaard focussen op de anatomie van de gesprekken en hoe het verspreid wordt. De methodologie kan toegepast worden in elk medium. Het doel was om een standaard methodologie op te zetten die iedereen kan gebruiken, waarbij er een centraal orgaan is die alle data verzameld en normen en benchmarks publiceert.

Te zien aan de website van ChatThreads (waar een “conversation id” kan worden ingevuld) moeten de mensen die “respondent” in de word-of-mouth campagne zijn geworden zelf actief hun deelname aangeven.

Onder de eerste klanten van ChatThreads bevinden zich Philips en Johnson & Johnson.

N.a.v. dit bericht (bron originele bericht research-live.com) heb ik Carl Walter een aantal vragen gesteld. Je vindt ze hieronder met zijn antwoorden:

- In the article you are quoted: “The goal from the beginning was for this
to become an industry standard methodology that everybody could use, and
that there would be a central body that would collect all these data
points, publish norms and benchmarks, and break it all down by industry
and category.”
You say that the methodology should be something everybody can use. Does
that mean that the details about the methodology will be published? If so,
when and where will it be published?

If not, what does it mean when you say everybody can use this methodology?

***
The methodology is proprietary but we describe it generally in the Word of
Mouth Marketing Association’s annual research volume entitled Measuring
Word of Mouth, Volume 3. The paper is called “Measuring the Ripple”
(there’s a really long sub-title as well). You can download a copy of the
full paper at my download page: www.waltercarl.neu.edu/downloads I am also
preparing an academic version of the article with a significantly larger
data set.
***

- You mentioned there should be a central body that collects all data
points. What would be the goal of collecting all data centrally? This
central body, should that be ChatThreads or a different – maybe
non-commercial – organisation?

***
The goal of collecting all the data centrally is to aggregate it and then
break it down by industry and product/service categories, effectively
providing benchmarks for the industry. We are proposing ChatThreads be that
central body, which I founded this summer, because it is an independent
entity that is commercializing the methodology for use by multiple
companies.
***

- From the website of ChatThreads I concluded that the “respondents” or
participants of the word-of-mouth (WOM) campaign have to actively record
their participation in the campaign. Is that correct? If so, is that the
only way of measuring the WOM-campaign?

***
You are correct that the participants in the WOM episodes self-report their
episodes. This allows us to capture data across all media forms (online,
offline, public, private). To address the inherent limitations of
self-report data we use multi-party validation (if one person says there
were five people in the conversation and they said X, we look to the other
people to confirm that information in their reports). We can also use other
methods to triangulate the data as well. So, for example, if someone
reports on a blog post or discussion in a publicly-available online venue
we can track that as well.

You asked if this is the only way of measuring the WOM campaign? No, there
are others, but none, to my knowledge, that does what the G2X methodology
does. (I would invite you to read some of the Measuring Word of Mouth
volumes to learn about other methodologies). At ChatThreads we feel we have
a unique methodology that captures the spread of brand-related
conversations across generations (from one person to the next to the next)
and over time (we incorporate a longitudinal component to our analysis; see
the chapter above for details). The methodology has been developed over
about two years and it has been tested on over 20 campaigns for a range of
products, services, experiences, and price points. Not only does it provide
reliable quantitative data on marketing-relevant intentions and behaviors
like inquiry, use/trial, purchase, and referral that are used for industry
benchmarking purposes, but it also yields tremendously rich qualitative
data that can be used to understand how people are talking about particular
brands and also what kinds of conversations and people drive purchase and
referral behavior. The data we collect can also be fed into various types
of forecasting and modeling packages to generate “what if?” scenarios or be
combined with data from other sources (like retail sales data).
***