Let the Community do the Marketing
It’s a common theme here: Word of Mouth. I love a good word of mouth story, especially when I know that the “campaign” was premeditated and empowered by a smart company. I am a marketer, after all.
Stormhoek is an example of a company that has spent what resources they have on trying to generate good buzz, and as the blogophiles reading this already know, it’s all due to the efforts of one man: Hugh MacLeod.
For newbies, a quick catch-up: Hugh MacLeod is a marketer, blogger and artist from England, who draws cartoons on the back of business cards:
He also has interest in a few companies, Stormhoek among them. Using nothing more than a few good ideas, a bit of free product and marketing to an influential community using free channels (his blog, email, et al) he’s been able to generate loads of word of mouth for this small wine company from South Africa.
But at this point, all of that is old news. The technophiles of Silicon Valley (and the world, really) have already made Stormhoek a success, just as MacLeod always figured they would. And that’s a wonderful thing. This is very Long Tail, (we’ll get to that in a later post, when I’ve read the book!) targeting a small niche market and enjoying “boutique” success in a world of industry giants.
But the reason I write this post today is because this “little wine that could” doesn’t just make for good blog posts and technology conference small-talk fodder, but apparently it’s worthy of being immortalized in song:
The Stormhoek Song, by Rob Lane, aka the Weekend Wino.
This is when word of mouth achieves a level of magic, when the community of users feels so strongly about your product that they pour their heart and soul (and considerable talents) into evangelizing on behalf of your company. And as a customer, who would you trust? The copywriters and creatives paid thousands to craft the pricey print ad, or the fan who wrote a song about how much he loves the product, with no encouragement at all?
Important note: Hugh and Stormhoek have never “led” their community to say anything in particular. They’ve just provided some free product to people they thought might spread the word, and then got out of the way. And now they have a free jingle, with built-in passion and a kick-ass steel drum accompaniment, IMO.
I have GOT to find a bottle of this stuff for my wife! Hugh? When can we expect a Canadian distributor?
(Use of the word evangelist is courtesy of the Church of the Customer Blog)
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