Hi everyone,
Just sharing my thoughts on a situation that happened recently at work and how fitting it is to my internship. Last week a group of employees on one of our rigs started telling all the others that their job were in jeopardy as they heard from word of mouth from another source not related to the company, that we were going to be making many people redundant. This of course was not the case at all and we made a trip out to the rig to dispel any such theories and set the situation right.
I remember in one of my introduction seminars to Public Relations, the lecturer stated that word of mouth can be the best and worst PR - which is so true. Many of my choices are now based solely on word of mouth - where I eat, shop or get my hair done - I rely a lot on peoples recommendations and/or blogs.
In this day in age, where facebook, my space and blogs are key tools in Public Relations, why haven't we devised better word of mouth structures? Mainly because it can't be controlled - which I think is a shame, as it is so powerful. Who knows, maybe in the not-so-distant future someone will come up with a way to use it to a company's advantage, after all that what such a powerful tool should be used for.
Bye for now
2 comments:
Hi Olivia,
I think the reason why people have such great faith in word of mouth is the very fact that it is uncontrolled. It is supposed to be truthful because those who give the comments are from neutral positions and they do not stand to gain anything.
However, you do not need to anticipate companies trying to manipulate word of mouth because it has already been happening for some years now.
Some companies pay popular bloggers to blog positively about their products and some pay "mystery shoppers" in grocery stores to rave about their products to other shoppers in the store.
I personally have even come across a company doing viral marketing, where they claim that they pay influential people to say good things about their clients' brands.
Ridiculous it may be, but these things are happening. The so-called word of mouth that we trust so dearly may not necessarily be that credible after all.
Belda
Yes, i think word of mouth is always the best and the worst tool for any job not only in PR.
I remember my colleague once tell me, he said he experience and saw a lot of times that many of the PR practitioner pretend to be good in front of all the media people.
In fact, they talk a lot of bad things behind them.
He said:"I do not do that because, PR this field is very small, it will get to their ear someday."
I think is pretty true, once when they know you are doing this, i am sure you will ruin the good relationship with them.
I guess, this is one of the reason that, in PR agency, they really want all the account manager to give a good impression to all the client. Everything you do, you speak, you prepare will reflect your professionalism of your agency.
This is the reason why, even when I was doing media clipping, when i cut, fold and paste all the clippings, it needs to be neat and nicely keep in a file.
Such single step will also show your profession and by word of mouth more and more people will know.
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