WOMOLOGY 101

Geno Church
| Brains On Fire
John Moore  
| Brand Autopsy

Functional.
Social.
Emotional.

The Social Trigger speaks to our need to express
our uniqueness to others in social settings.

The Emotional Trigger drives people to share
positive or negative feelings about a brand.

The Functional Trigger explains why people share
knowledge and seek knowledge about brands.

People rely more  
on "word of mouth"
for brands that are
new and or highly
complex.

People engage in Functional
conversations about brands
to get information needed
to make decisions and to
better interpret the world
around them.

With new and complex
products, people need
help to understand why
to use it, how to use it,
when to use it, and
where to use it.

“People engage in WOM in
order to get the necessary
information needed to
survive, to interpret the
world in order to function.”
-Emanuel Rosen  
Anatomy of Buzz (2002)…

We naturally talk to function.

Amy’s story began on Twitter. Being
new to Greenville, she didn't have a
go-to glasses shop, so she threw the
question out to her Twitter
following. A friend in Texas
responded, suggesting Amy
check out Warby Parker.
Fcfunctional
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newness
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complexity
online
Amy@NoMeatballs

So Amy did.....
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Amy was initially wary of an
online glasses store. Amy
loved the idea of every pair of
frames/lenses being under
$100 (compared to the $300
or $400 typically spent in
"real" stores), being one of
those people who needs to try
on 50 pairs before she ﬁnds
the perfect pair. WP's home
try-on program was a perfect
ﬁt for Amy.
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All you have to do is go
onto their website,
choose ﬁve pairs, and
WP sends you an at-
home kit to try the
glasses on for 5 days.
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If you like one, you send
it back and let them
know. They'll make the
glasses with your
prescription. If you
don't like any of the
frames, you send them
back and select another
ﬁve you want to give a
go. WP covers the cost
of shipping to and fro.
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Those who are a little
indecisive can upload
pics of themselves
wearing their try-on
frames, and a WP team
of specialists (along
with the WP Facebook
fan base) will vote on
which frames they like
the best.
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online

Within ten days of ﬁrst learning
about WP Amy had tried on ten
pairs of glasses, placed her order
online and received her new
glasses.
“It has been even more fun
getting to spread the word about
WP to others in my social circle.
It's a fun, fresh, engaging
business model that not only
makes shopping for glasses fun,
it inspires you to bring other
people into the fold, too.”
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Brands that are new and
complicated to understand
will beneﬁt from functional
word of mouth.

People engage in Social
conversations about brands
to impress others,
to express uniqueness,
and to increase their
reputation.

People can feel better about who they are
by talking to others about brands that are as
distinctive and interesting as they view themselves.

“The higher the degree of
differentiation of a brand, the
easier it is for an individual
to project uniqueness.”

We’ve all engaged in word of mouth conversations about
brands that signal our uniqueness to others…

Brands that invoke STRONG EMOTIONS
are more likely to be TALKED ABOUT.Ememotional

When we are OVERJOYED,
we TELL OTHERS.Ememotional

Ememotional
When we are DISGUSTED,
we TELL OTHERS.

And when we are INDIFFERENT,
we DON’T TELL OTHERS.Ememotional

“Emotions play a large role
in driving word of mouth.
When a person experiences
emotional arousal, they share
the experience with others.”
-Jonah Berger
Wharton School of Business

High arousal emotions, like AMUSEMENT and ANXIETY,
drive word of mouth conversations.
Emotions characterized by low arousal, such as  
sadness or contentment… not so much.

Geeky
TidBit
Ememotional
Eaemotional
amusement
Exemotional
anxiety

Jogging… boosts general arousal over sitting.
Ememotional
Eaemotional
amusement
Exemotional
anxiety

Student studies showed that students who jogged over those who sat
were more likely to spread a neutral or low arousal online article.
Ememotional
Eaemotional
amusement
Exemotional
anxiety

Yes, anxiety and emotion in
general can boost WOM. But
also situations that heighten
arousal should boost social
transmission - er, i mean WOM

tap into stories about products 
that communicate amazing,
amusing, and awe-inspiring
aspects about a brand.

Ememotional
Eaemotional
amusement

Cause-related
marketers can beneﬁt
by bringing forth
stories that convey
troubling and
worrisome emotions.
Ememotional
Exemotional
anxiety

Ememotional
Exemotional
anxiety

Emotional word of mouth
conversations are sparked
when people are highly
aroused. If your brand can
spark amusement, amazement,
and or anxiety, then your brand
stands a far better chance of
being talkable by being more
emotional.

Brands are talked about in two conversation channels,
the oﬄine channel and the online channel.

Oﬄine conversations are usually with people in personal,
one-on-one situations — making it more appropriate to talk
emotionally about matters.

Online conversations are usually with people in more public
settings like Facebook and Twitter — thus, making it more of
a channel to broadcast our uniqueness, our expert knowledge,
and our passions.

We engage in FUNCTIONAL conversations about brands
to get information needed to make a decision and to
better interpret the world around us.

We participate in SOCIAL conversations about
brands that allow us to socially signal our
uniqueness, expertise and passion.

People engage in EMOTIONAL conversations about
brands because of excitement and love for  
some brands and disgust for other brands.

When talking with
people face-to-face
and voice-to-voice,
we are motivated
first by our
EMOTIONAL trigger,

then by our
FUNCTIONAL
trigger,

and thirdly, our
SOCIAL trigger.

Online, we are
motivated first by
our SOCIAL trigger,

second by our
FUNCTIONAL trigger

thirdly by our
EMOTIONAL
trigger.

}{offline
online
Periodic Table
of WOMology

focus your marketing
eﬀorts on getting
current customers to
tell their friends and
friends of friends to
spread word of mouth
oﬄine.

spend more time
using online
marketing activities to
get people sharing
and talking.

focus on bringing
forth stories that
evoke strong
emotional reactions
not indiﬀerence
oﬄine / online

If you better understand WHY people are
talking about your brand and WHERE
people are talking, you’ll be in a better
place to design marketing activities in the
RIGHT channel, oﬄine or online, in order
to make your brand more conversational
to become more talkable.

We talk about movies, shoes, bad restaurants,
and how to ﬁx a leaky faucet.

What leads people  
to talk about a certain
product or brand rather
than others.
Much less is know about…

Can the conversation 
channel itself shape  
what PEOPLE talk about?

Prior research showed: rather than
being driven by motivation, WOM,
particularly ongoing WOM, is driven by
accessibility.

we have face to face conversations
we post on blogs
we write online reviews
we send texts
we send emails
chat on our phones
WOM can be shared in many diﬀerent ways…

The conversation channel
continuity shape what 
gets discussed…

In discontinuous channels
(online, text), pauses
between conversational
turns are expected…
So, people have time 
to select and craft 
what they say.

More interesting products
should be talked about
more than boring ones.

In channels where
conversations occur more
continuously (f2f, phone).
There is less time to be
selective about what you
talk about.

People communicate information when
they talk… they also communicate things
about themselves.

People not only communicate
through what they talk about,
they also communicate
through how they talk.

Most face-to-face conversations as
well as phone conversations involve
continuous discussion. There is an
expectation that ongoing conversation
will occur, and it is awkward to sit
in silence.

Contrast that, with the types of conversations
that occur online; discussion forums, blogs
or Facebook, they’re mostly discontinuous
in nature. People have time to deliberate
and think through what they say.

Many Practitioners often
argue that products need to
be interesting to be talked
about…

When conversations are expected to be
discontinuous, people have time to select
and craft what they say. They have more
opportunity to think of a clever or interesting
response and can wait to respond until they
have something worthwhile to talk about.

In discontinuous channels
people should be more likely
to post or share something if
they think it will be interesting.

When conversations are
continuous, as in most
face-to-face interactions,
there is less time to selectively
pick what one talks about.

People will talk about whatever
is top-of-mind to keep the
conversation ﬂowing.

before you cry… bullshit!
lets put the research under
the microscope…

1) aggregate word-of-mouth data from people who have
conversations both online and offline (pilot study).
2) individual-level dataset covering word-of-mouth over various
channels. It contained over 35,000 brand and product mentions of
approximately 6,000 people who recorded all of the word-of-mouth
they engaged in, as well as the channel they used (face-to-face,
online posts, or text) over a one-day period.
3) tested the causal impact of conversation continuity through an
experiment. We keep the conversation channel itself the same but
manipulate whether people expect to pause (or not) before and
between conversational turns.

There was a positive and signiﬁcant
relationship between interest and online
posts in online conversations, more
interesting products were mentioned
more frequently than their less interesting
counterparts.

In contrast, there was no relationship
between interest and face-to-face word-
of-mouth in face-to-face conversations,
more interesting products were not
mentioned more frequently than their
less interesting counterparts.

Interest has a much larger impact on online
conversations than oﬄine conversations.
Similarly, interest has a larger
impact on text or email rather
than phone conversations.

Not only was the relationship between
interest and word-of-mouth diﬀerent in
online and oﬄine channels, but results
were the same for other types of continuous
(phone) and discontinuous (text and email)
conversation channels.

When pauses between and before conversational
turns are expected (discontinuous), more interesting
topics and brands are more likely to be discussed
than less interesting ones. In contrast, when pauses
between and before conversational turns is not
expected (continuous), this diﬀerence disappears.

If the goal is to get more discussion online,
framing the product in an interesting or
surprising way should help. Ads or online
content that surprises people, violates
expectations, or evokes interest in some other
manner should be more likely to be shared.

If the goal is to get more offline word-of-
mouth, however, then other factors may be
more important than evoking interest. In a
face-to-face context, making the product
accessible in consumer minds, or publicly
visible, may be more important.

Class Dismissed
Geno Church | @GenoChurch John Moore | @BrandAutopsy  
On Brands and Word-Of-Mouth
Renana Peres, Ron Shachar, Mitch Lovett 
How Interest Shapes Word-of-Mouth Over Diﬀerent Channels
Jonah Berger, Raghuram Iyengar 
Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information
Jonah Berger

WOMOLOGY 101

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