In 2004, Pete Blackshaw, Jonathan Carson and Dave Balter (yeah, that’s me) founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Our goal was to help our industry grow by setting ethical and measurement standards. We knew almost nothing about associations, but we were adept at building businesses and had passion to beat the band
Last week, at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, the Association held its annual conference and nearly 500 people chatted, shook hands, reconnected, learned something and generally got their Vegas on. The rise of Social Media and the FTC’s updated Endorsement Guides were the major themes of the event, and provided plenty of fodder for discussion and debate.
A rolling boulder collects no moss…and these early WOMMA characters are no different. Here’s where these early industry innovators were then and where they are now …
| Who | Then | Now |
| Pete Blackshaw (@peteblackshaw) | I mean, this guy needs no intro, but back then he was a big brain at Intelliseek. Pete and I started egging each other on to develop WOMMA during a prep session for an Ad-Tech panel. | Ok, so Intelliseek merged with BuzzMetrics, then they got bought by Nielsen. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. New fact from this conference: Pete can go to bed at 1 AM, only to wake at 3 AM in a fit of note-taking and memo-writing. |
| Dr. Walter Carl (@doctorwom) | The non-nutty Northeastern professor who started experimenting with proving the reach of offline word of mouth conversations. | Now those early Northeastern experiments are the foundation of Chat Threads, an incredible platform that helps companies measure the results of word of mouth and social media initiatives. |
| Jackie Huba (@jackiehuba) & Ben McConnell (@benmcconnell) | Yeah, they wrote the incredible, Creating Customer Evangelists and Jackie spent some time on the WOMMA Board. Both are wicked smart. | Now joining forces with Sean O’Driscoll, Jake McKee and Sean McDonald to continue to build Ant’s Eye View, which plays at the intersection of customer engagement and social technologies. The whole crew has a cone of creativity you need to get inside. |
| Max Kalehoff (@maxkalehoff) | PR genius with BuzzMetrics (now Neilsen Online), who helped WOMMA really craft its messaging. Plus he has cool glasses and a big smile. | Sharp-as-hell tack at Clickable, continuing to ask the questions that need to be asked, and more often than not, giving us the answers. Big smile still big. |
| Brad Fay and Ed Keller | Ed wrote the Influentials while still at Roper NOP, where Brad and he were gainfully employed. Ed pontificated often that this Word of Mouth stuff had big potential for the rapidly evolving research industry. | Now run Keller Fay Group, a pre-eminent Word of Mouth research firm, and Ed was even President of WOMMA for a few years. Fun fact: Ed was home sick and didn’t make this event, but Brad showed up and someone even called him Ed. I mean, they are hard to confuse. |
| Steve Knox (@trav1955) | Steve ran the show at P&G’s Tremor, a teen-based Word of Mouth network that eventually added Vocalpoint, which focused on Moms. Nothing said success more than P&G, one of the world’s greatest marketers, establishing its own business in this space. | Tremor/Vocalpoint continues to break new ground with its methodology. They’re now an outstanding member of WOMMA, and Steve is still running the show. And this guy can present to be the band: At this most recent conference he delivered a case on Kashi that was one of the most inspiring, thoughtful – and talked about – moments of the event. |
| Owen Mack & Jesse Buckley (@cobrandit) | The guys behind Co-Brandit were yapping to us about video before anyone cared, including us. They hung around a lot, and we thought they were either crackpots, or this video stuff might just have a future. | Well, video seems to have made it. Co-Brandit has since filmed every single WOMMA event, giving them the only true historical record of the industry’s growth. They’re still doing amazing social media video production. Unknown cool fact: these dudes are cousins. |
| John Moore (@wommajohn) | The dude who wrote awesome blog posts at Brand Autopsy about evangelism and advocacy, said what needed to be said, and never ever pulled a single punch | Now officially part of the WOMMA crew, providing marketing leadership. Still blogging, thinking and not even close to pulling punches. Plus he wears a mean lab coat. |
| Dave Reis (@davidreis) | Dave is the guy behind DEI. He was in the room when we pulled that first group together and was the consummate cheerleader. | DEI is still kicking it, big time. Dave wore the nicest pinstripe suit at the whole event. Really. |
| Emmanuel Rosen (@emmanuelrosen) | Emmanuel wrote the Anatomy of Buzz, a book that laid the foundation for many future Word of Mouth businesses, including BzzAgent. | The revised edition of Anatomy of Buzz is out now (everyone got a copy in their bag); it’s an even better read than the first and updates word of mouth for the social media era |
| Todd Steinman (@tsteinman) | Todd was one of the M80 boys, alongside Jeff Semones and Dave Neupert – they were in the room when started talking about organizing the industry. True fact: most of the M80 folks were a lot hipper than rest of us. | As an early pioneer in the digital Word of Mouth landscape, it’s no wonder WPP’s Group M decided to buy them a few years back. They’re now evolving deeply into social media. They’re still pretty cool. |
| Jamie Tedford (@jamietedford) | Jamie has great hair. It’s true, and that gave him some mad presence. Jamie led Arnold into the Word of Mouth industry, extolling the need for agencies to get smart about medium, long before many were wise to it. | Now Jamie is CEO of Brand Networks, a marketing company that helps “socialize” brands….Jamie sat on WOMMA’s board for a term, and he still has great hair. |
| Bob Troia (@bobtroia) & Warren Ackerman (@warrenackerman) | Bob and Warren ran Fanpimp, which developed online fan communities mainly for the entertainment industry. At the time the debate was whether this was the new ‘street team’ or guerrilla marketing or actually Word of Mouth. | Fanpimp eventually evolved into Affinitive, an amazing brand community platform with a suite of tools to manage, monitor and engage social media advocacy. Don’t let them fool you though: These guys have plenty of fans, and they’re still pimps (in the best way possible, of course). |
It was a hazy few days…that’s all I remember. Congrats, BTW, to the entire WOMMA team for pulling this event together. Truly exceptional work…
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If you were REALLY starting from the beginning of WOM industry, I think you would include John Goodman and Marc Grainer, the co-founders of TARP.
They were doing WOM research and consulting since the early 1970′s, long long before the internet!!
Great point…certainly much work was done before this, including folks like Everett Rogers, etc. I think the Internet was the impetus for accelerated change that created a true centralized industry. We’d be nothing without all of the folks who came before us though!
impressive List! I’m totally agree with every one of them. Great professionals and writers such as Jackie Huba, Ben McConnell, Emmanuel Rosen, had always helped me to get a clear and down to earth philosophy about Marketing.
Also agree with Colleen, those guys were pionners, too.
and, Thanks a lot for sharing this great information; I’m already writing a draft to post about it
cheers,
@RolandoPeralta
Wow! This brings back a ton of memories. I was there at the very first WOMMA gathering in Chicago way back when, and it’s nice to see everyone so successful. The wonderful news is that everyone on this list is a good guy. That’s the terrific part about the WOMM industry. With very few exceptions, this is an industry made up of genuinely good people.
Kudos all around!
Cheers!
Michael
disclosure: I was one of WOMMA’s first employees back in the day. Dave helped hire me.
Thanks for the props on my role and of course my hair- an honor, on both fronts. Most of us owe a great deal of gratitude to Pete and Dave for having the insight and moxie to create something as silly as a “word of mouth marketing association.” Who knew it would get all growns up, and spawn the new hybrid Social Media/WOM industry it is today. Well, I guess you guys did. Well done.
Jamie
Is there any way to apply teflon coatings in a domestic project?
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