BATES SERVICES

This isn't your father's marketing. It's gone, forever. Dead as the dodo. But the replacement is infinitely more fun, more productive, and can be less expensive if you do it skillfully. I'm talking about a hybrid. The hybrid that results from blending traditional marketing with word of mouth marketing. I call it Embedded Word of Mouth, and it's the subject of a book that I am in the process of getting published. It's been over thirty years since I launched my B2B ad agency based on traditional marketing, and only six years since the world of WOMM (word of mouth marketing) opened up for me. So you can understand that there was a huge bias to overcome. But it was done and you can do it too if you just develop a receptive mind and plan on learning a lot.

There isn't room enough in this short paper to get into all the nuances of word of mouth marketing so I'm only going to touch on that aspect that is required to sustain a WOMM program once you've launched it. It's called Accelerated Contagion, and Emanuel Rosen explains its justification below in an excerpt from his best selling book, "The Anatomy of Buzz".

"Two things are needed to create buzz successfully. The first one is to have a contagious product. But having such a product alone is not enough. Companies that get good buzz also accelerate natural contagion."
"Technology markets, for example, are almost like presidential election campaigns, where there's no prize for second place. Winner takes all. In these markets the natural spread of word of mouth must be accelerated. Having a good product is not enough."

What Is Accelerated Contagion?
Accelerated Contagion is a multi-media, lead generation activity based on response compression techniques. It is a fully integrated three month program that combines traditional media with interactive media to create a sense of event, which in turn produces a substantial flow of leads in a very short time with minimal commitment of financial resources. Typically it uses three to five media vehicles to present your message to prospects over a week to ten day period at the beginning of each of three months.

The Source - And Rationale
Why response compression? To quote Ernan Roman, author of Integrated Direct Marketing, "We have found that the traditional sequencing of media does not create the maximum synergy from the media being employed. Specifically, the impressions are conveyed over too long a time period, diluting the impact to a significant degree ... we create a sequence of ongoing contacts, using a variety of media. These are deployed with short, carefully orchestrated intervals between contacts so that we gain a disproportionate share of the prospect's attention. A sense of event is generated - a feeling that something important is going on. It would be far more difficult, if not impossible to achieve this effect through isolated media. We call this tighter time-frame approach "response compression". By deploying media in an abbreviated time frame, we create an intensified synergy between media that generates much higher response rates."

Typical Components
Media for Accelerated Contagion runs the gamut from microsites, search engine optimization and marketing, weblogs, chat rooms, email, voice and fax broadcasting, telemarketing, direct mail, tradeshows, webinars, print media, broadcast, experiential, promotion, seeding, CGM (consumer-generated media), and evangelism, plus others.

Where does Accelerated Contagion fit in the WOMM world?
What will Accelerated Contagion do for your WOM Marketing? Increase flow of qualified leads! Shorten selling cycles! Besides adding visibility and muscle to your sales and marketing it speeds up the distribution of your word of mouth---regardless of your approach. Points to consider:

• Influencer relations, while potent, are slow and reach relatively few people. Sustaining influencer relations can be very labor intensive.
  
• Viral marketing, while potent also, is fast, and if done well, it reaches many people. But virals are typically short lived so that Accelerated Contagion is critical to sustain the awareness generated by the viral. Plus acceptance carries a high risk.
  
• Cultivating evangelists, while incredibly potent, can be tedious work in that it is often difficult to find volunteers who will take a leadership role, and the numbers reached are typically small.

Specifically, accelerated contagion is designed to:

• Expand the numbers of contacts for influencer relations
  
• Add longevity to the impact of your viral marketing
  
• Raise public exposure and product enthusiasm via evangelism.

BIO
After managing a high tech ad agency for 30 years Keith Bates is now operating as a marcom consultant to the software industry out of a home office. The focus of his efforts lie in the development of creative imagery and strategic planning for word of mouth marketing clients with an emphasis on the viral marketing required to support accelerated contagion. He is a charter member of WOMMA and long time member of ITA (Illinois Information Technology Assn., and both its predecessor organizations' CSA and the Chicago High Tech Association.)

Founded in 1970 Keith Bates & Associates, Inc. was long acknowledged as the most experienced high tech ad agency in America. Along with its PR firm Walker-Bates, Keith served the sales and marcom needs of more than 150 software and services companies nationwide. He has been a communications consultant to companies ranging from such industry giants as Arthur Andersen (when they were behaving themselves), Boeing, Chasm Institute, IBM, JD Edwards, KPMG, Lawson, Novarra, Pansophic Systems, and Zenith Data Systems to dozens of VC and angel funded startups.

Bates' competitive advantage stems from creative skills, strategic planning expertise, sensitivity to communications issues, and an ability to translate complex ideas and technologies into easily understood and appealing product attributes. Walls full of awards (given for achieving sales levels, not clever aesthetics) testify to their effectiveness. Bates pioneered the development of the Marcom Engine in 1993 bringing to the B2B sales and marketing environment an easily understood and manageable business process to replace the traditionally inconsistent. To learn more, visit our website www.kbates.com.