PSSSSST! HAVE YOU TASTED THIS? MOTHERS SOUND OFF IN WORD-OF-MOUTH ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.

Byline: BARBARA CORREA Staff Writer

Just hours after Emily Grant plunked down a box of Hershey's Take 5 candy bars at a PTA meeting, a teacher who sampled the chocolate treat raced out to buy a king-size bar.

On the surface, the candy bar purchase was a simple act of impulse buying.

But in reality, it was the successful application of a clever marketing tool that uses everyday people to entice friends and family to buy products.

Word-of-mouth advertising has mushroomed in recent years as companies try to reach an increasingly inaccessible consumer base -- one hiding in a multimedia fog of iPods, video games and infinite Web sites and cable channels. Advertisers simply can't reach consumers with traditional television, magazine and newspaper ads in such a stratified marketing environment.

So they're turning to women such as Grant -- a well-connected mom whose opinion is valued within her peer group.

Secret-agent moms

Within the word-of-mouth advertising community, people such as Grant are known as ``agents.''

But these agents don't carry eavesdropping devices and disguises -- they push household products in exchange for coupons and the very products they're promoting.

Throughout her agent career, Grant has soaked herself in a Ralph Lauren fragrance called Hot, taken Nutella samples to her sons' play dates and painted her hallway with a light-blue shade of Benjamin Moore paint.

The supplier of the products sent to her, Boston-based marketing company BzzAgent, instructs all its agents to tell people that they are getting freebies to promote them. Grant says she doesn't see any conflict in marketing products to friends simply by sharing samples with them.

``I'm not a big sales person with my friends,'' she said. ``There's no need to push because it's just regular stuff.''

Some worry about ethics

Some agencies and companies do not require their agents to announce that they are in fact pushing products, preferring to leave that decision up to the individual agent. While that has some worried about the ethical implications of the practice, advocates say tell-a-friend campaigns are more honest than traditional advertising.

``Word-of-mouth is actually the most honest form of marketing because you can't con someone about the experience of a product,'' said George Silverman, president of Market Navigation, Inc., a company that, among other things, organizes conference calls for physicians to share opinions about pharmaceuticals. ``You don't expect a salesperson to be objective, but I've always found that people don't lie to their friends, and they generally won't tell a friend about something unless they genuinely like it.''

Silverman says traditional advertising has been losing consumers in recent years because people feel bombarded by information and are tuning out marketing messages. ``People are overloaded. I've done focus groups with everyone from Hispanic gardeners to Fortune-500 executives. They're all overloaded. Word-of-mouth is the only thing that cuts through the overload. If you want to buy something, you can spend two months researching it or you can ask a friend. Which is more fun?''

For that reason, he said, more manufacturers are turning to word-of-mouth to sell everything from coffee makers to mobile phones.

Recruiting teens, doctors

Most programs target big-spending groups such as moms and teenagers, and efforts vary in how aggressive they get.

Mothers, especially working mothers, are especially prized by word-of-mouth marketers because they have a large sphere of contacts: through school, their kids' activities and co- workers.

``(Women) are the ones who are controlling all the consumer spending in this country,'' said Kevin Burke, president of Lucid Marketing, a word-of-mouth company in Burbank specifically focused on selling to moms. ``Their roles have evolved in the last 20 years. The stereotype of the male controlling certain purchases is eroding.''

The certainty of that buying power prompted consumer products giant Procter & Gamble to launch a program about a year ago called Vocalpoint. To date, the program has recruited well more than half a million moms, while another unit, Tremor, has enlisted several hundred thousand teenagers to talk to their friends about new music and video games.

`Straddles a thin line'

However, P&G is one of the word-of-mouth marketers that doesn't require its program members to disclose their involvement. The potential for infiltration of product placement in everyday life -- such as name-dropping a particular dishwashing liquid to another mom watching football practice -- has sparked a storm of controversy.

``It straddles a thin line,'' said George Silverman, the marketing strategist. ``The bad side of it is using people as shills.''

P&G does not require Vocalpoint and Tremor members to disclose that they are taking products because it does not want to tell members what to say, P&G spokeswoman Robin Schroeder said.

``They want it to be very natural,'' she said.

But the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a fast-growing group founded in 2004, defines that approach as deceptive. ``We were formed to take on that particular issue,'' CEO Andy Sernovitz said.

``Our code of ethics is, marketers have to disclose. ... Tremor and Vocalpoint have not signed on to our code of ethics. They are conspicuously missing from the list.''

Other marketing experts say companies that explicitly hide their marketing tactics are eventually found out, and the ethics surrounding word-of-mouth marketing are self-correcting.

``P&G is just hoping folks will talk about them,'' said Kevin Dugan, director of marketing communications at a design firm and author of a blog about public relations strategy. His wife became a Vocalpoint member when she found out about the program from him.

``There's no specific direction to go out and talk to people or to disclose. There are no talking points. The risk they have is, say my wife had Oil of Olay beauty mask. If she doesn't like it, she's going to tell someone about it. She doesn't feel compelled to talk about it because they sent it to her. With the Oil of Olay, she'll bring it up if it comes up, but it's not, `I know we're talking about your kid's soccer game and I hate to interrupt, but I need to talk about this facial mask.'

``It needs to be organic to be effective.''

Like the recent outing of lonelygirl15, the homeschooled girl whose fictitious YouTube identity was revealed a few weeks ago by curious fans, some companies have posed as Regular Joes online and been punished by consumers who have unearthed their true identity. Carmaker Mazda turned off some loyalists when it launched a blog hosted by someone posing as a Mazda enthusiast.

All the talk can backfire

Word-of-mouth also has plenty of examples of campaigns that backfired because products were not very good. Irina Slutsky, a video blogger and host of Geek Entertainment TV, received a mobile phone from Sprint six months ago apparently in the hope that she would write about it in her blog.

``The display screen broke two months after I got it, so if I had written about it, it would be all bad stuff,'' Slutsky said. ``I thought, `That's a silly marketing plan.'''

Folgers hired BzzAgent to create hype about its home brewing machines. The problem was the machines didn't work well, reportedly leaking water and emitting smoke.

Such backfire worries have kept some big companies form engaging in word-of-mouth marketing.

``Companies are very scared of it,'' Silverman said. ``Nuclear power is very efficient and clean if it handles right, but you'd better know what you're doing, or you're going to blow up the place. Marketers are control freaks, and you can't control a lot of aspects of word-of-mouth marketing.''

barbara.correa(at)dailynews.com

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(color) Mothers sound off in word-of-mouth advertising campaigns

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