Trying to spark a word-of-mouth campaign or ‘buzz’ about a new product or service has always been very risky, but now the Tremor division of Proctor & Gamble is building tools to reduce the risk. If you’re interested at all in using word-of-mouth as a marketing tool, you should read this article, which also has good data about the success of Tremor and BzzAgent with a variety of clients.

Making Waves by Samar Farah at CMO Magazine.

The advocacy and amplification model was constructed from a mix of academic theory, psychological insights, existing P&G data and Tremor’s proprietary research. In Tremor lingo, advocacy is what happens when a connector naturally experiences a product and likes it enough to talk about it with her peers. "When connectors are exposed to a new idea," explains Knox, "the first question they ask themselves is, ‘Is this idea worth my advocacy?’ It’s their social currency on the line, so it has to be a product that they at least believe in."

Tremor doesn’t let the fickle emotions of high school hallways determine whether a connector responds to a product. "We have a way of finding what the critical advocacy component is of a brand and what would cause a connector to advocate it," says Knox.

The second element in Tremor’s word-of-mouth model, amplification, means that a product message or experience is easy to talk about, that it lends itself to casual mentioning in varied conversations. "It’s very difficult to find a word-of-mouth concept that has both high advocacy and amplification," says Knox.