Black Ops Advertising. Mara Einstein

Unsponsored is what we have been discussing thus far: any natural or “organic” conversation about a product. Sponsored word of mouth, on the other hand, is far more stealth than its unpaid counterpart. These communications make it look like one person is simply making a recommendation to another, but in reality, there is a marketer behind the Influencer’s message.

      Word of mouth—sponsored or otherwise—is being driven by the ubiquitous use of mobile phones and the accompanying apps. These have enabled us to read, share, review, and retweet on the go when we have down time during our workday, or at night while we are engaging with other media. As of the third quarter of 2014, Americans spend more time on mobile devices than they do watching television. Most of that online time is spent with apps, and of that, 80 percent is spent with one of the following five sources: Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, Google Maps, and Gmail. Since advertising spending follows the eyeballs, spending on mobile has grown exponentially, with the expectation that it will reach $40 billion in 2016, more than doubling what it was in 2014.¹⁸

      Talking about brands (unsponsored WOM) has become a part of everyday conversation. Here are the stats: on a typical day, 76 percent of Americans will talk about brands, ten brands will be discussed, and 70 percent of the time, those conversations will include a recommendation.¹⁹ As noted above, many of these brand-based conversations are urged along with corporate intervention. This WOM marketing can also be called buzz marketing, viral marketing, and grassroots marketing.²⁰ Whatever it is called, the intention behind it is to drive consumer conversations without making it look like there’s a marketer’s hand in the mix.

      Marketers generate brand conversations by finding Influencers (Millennials with followings or celebrities) who will positively promote a product in the hopes of it going viral, thus creating “buzz” around a product. According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), buzz marketing is “using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.”²¹ There are several methods that can be used to do this. Sponsored celebrity tweets are used for a vast array of products, and the cost for those 140 characters can be substantial, depending on the celebrity and the size of their audience. The Kardashian sisters make more than $10,000 per tweet, and Kim is reported to have made double that to promote EOS lip balm.²² Chinese actress Fan Bingbing combined her announcement of a new romance with three brands that she endorses.²³ Vine celebrities—people who have become online stars by making six-second videos—can also make a handsome sum by using these short snippets to promote consumer products. These “celebs” with anywhere from 300 thousand to 4 million followers have been known to promote everything from GE to Warner’s Bras to Coke, and they can make as much as $30,000 for a Vine—which has no sponsor designation in sight.²⁴ There is now even an app called Cosign that enables individuals to make money when their friends purchase products based on their recommendation.

      More controversial, and frankly illegal, is promoting products online without letting readers know that the blogger or Influencer received compensation for writing about the product.²⁵ A whole industry now exists to support connecting Influencers with products. Amazon, for instance, has the Amazon Vine program, which gives “trusted reviewers” products to sample so that they can write about them.²⁶ Beyond PR companies that connect Influencers to products, as we discussed in the previous chapter, there are now online companies, like Izea and Ad.ly, that match blogs and social media stars to products. Advertisers can go onto the Izea website, for example, and see how many followers a celebrity has and how much they charge for tweeting. The website then sends an email to the celebrity, who can accept the advertiser’s offer of promotional money or not. If accepted, the cost gets charged to a credit card. It’s that simple. Similarly, anyone who blogs, tweets, or uses Instagram can create an account on Izea and presumably be connected to advertisers. Their promotional video describes it in the following way: