[caption id="attachment_807" align="alignnone" width="98" caption="NOT the P&G Tremor"][/caption]

You have to take your hat off to the marketers at P&G - I have just finished looking over a presentation by their Janelle Zurek called "Leveraging Cognitive Science to Create Word-of-Mouth (2009) published by MSI in a conference summary.

Tremor is the P&G agency that offers marketing services related to WOM for P&G and other customers. "Tremor's (US) database includes 350,000 moms (sic) with higher than average networks and ability to influence others."

The nuggets of wisdom?

1. Tremor confirmed previous findings - 90% of word-of-mouth happens off-line
2. People talk when their equilibrium is disrupted i.e. they are surprised. Reminds me of a quote (author's name escapes me) "Most innovation does not start with 'aha' it starts with 'that's funny'." She presents the example that 2-in-one shampoos are no longer a surprise, they match our cognitive schemas now. "But waterless shampoo disrupts our equilibrium; it is a surprise. That is a first step for word-of-mouth."
3. This disruption requires we all get back to equilibrium and we do this by referring to others or by nurturing others, both WOM activities.

Tremor now measure surprise in their concept testing research.

When is the last time your marketing or value proposition surprised your customers? Would you know if it did?