• by Shankar Gupta , August 7, 2006

The word-of-mouth monitoring industry appears to be expanding this week, with two separate companies launching new offerings.

Market research firm MarketTools today will unveil a new tool that tracks brand perception across a variety of user-generated media. In addition, word-of-mouth monitoring firm Umbria today will roll out a new service that makes recommendations based on data gleaned from message boards and blogs.

Umbria has beefed up its staff by hiring new analysts for its product, Umbria Accent, which issues quarterly reports on changes in the word-of-mouth landscape. Previously, Umbria gave its clients data in relatively raw form.

Umbria has tested its service for the last two months. One test client, ad agency Brains on Fire, used it to monitor a word-of-mouth campaign for Fiskars, a Finnish company that manufactures those ubiquitous orange-handled scissors.

The campaign for Fiskars involved creating a blog network, dubbed "the Fiskateers," and which Umbria helped structure, according to Geno Church, who heads up Brains on Fire's word-of-mouth unit.

MarketTools also tested its tracking product with Del Monte Foods, which is monitoring consumer reaction in order to find "deeper insights into consumer's minds," said Gala D. Amoroso, senior market research manager for Del Monte. "We'll be in a position to let consumers tell us what products or messaging we should be developing, as opposed to the other way around."