• July 12, 2005

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association Monday released a draft of what it's calling a "terminology framework." The guidelines, which were developed with help from more than 50 researchers and marketers, from companies including Intelliseek, America Online, Dell and BuzzMetrics, are part of an effort to standardize the new vocabulary for quantifying the basic elements a word-of-mouth campaign. One new term is "WOMUnit," which describes "a single unit of marketing-relevant shared by a consumer." WOMUnits can be further refined by a variety of other new terms, such as topicality (whether the WOMUnits are consistent with the intended marketing message), polarity (whether they are positive or negative), clarity, and depth (which is defined by WOMMA as how persuasive a particular WOMUnit is). The WOMMA framework also defines "participants," which are further divided into "creators," "senders," and "receivers." Participants also can be further descrbed by propensity (the likeliness of a consumer to take an action), demographics, credibility and reach. -- By Shankar Gupta