eMarketer report on WOMM

By Ted Wright July 16, 2007

Recently the good folks at eMarketer sent me a copy of their most recent report on WOMM. We here at Fizz get lots of these summaries and reports and in all honesty we mostly think they are rather thin and not worth the effort to read or share with a client. This one however was not so I thought I would alert everyone. Here’s what we liked about this report:

Great sources – Almost like a who’s who of WOMMA, this author took the time to talk with off-line as well as on-line specialists. The effort paid off it creating a well balanced review of WOMM today.

Data intensive – Lots of useful graphs, numbers and out year projections that will help you make the case for WOMM whether you are selling a client on an inside task force on marketing, this report had it all.

Overall we found this report to be a reflection of many different points of view, studies and bias based on the commenter’s business. This leads to the only real caution about this report from our prospective – there are conflicting POV’s in here about WOMM. We here at Fizz would not use this report as a primer for any client or potential client who is new to WOMM. We feel that it would leave those new to WOMM more concerned and less likely to implement a WOMM program after they had read the report.

We also did not understand the link the author was making between consumer generated media, youth and word of mouth marketing. It has been the experience of the Fizz team over the last seven years that Influencers exist in similar percentages across all demos in mature media markets. Perhaps this is only true in our area of focus – beverages.

All in all we found this report to be very useful and well worth it’s $700 price tag. Like all powerful tools it must be used with caution and in the right circumstance for maximum effectiveness. Please wear your safety goggles at all times.