We use brands that we have “heard of” before, either that the brands have achieved strong and well-known equities or that they were recommended to us by a friend or an acquaintance. For the latter case, it is crucial to get the conversation going. This is why both the relatively less-known brands, as well as strong brands invest in "word of mouth". Along with the increased effect of online communications, companies have started investing more and more into “word of mouse”. Word of mouse can be generated through various means such as online forums, chat rooms, e-mail based buzz marketing, product review sites and, especially these days, through social networking sites. It is a way of advertising that is unpaid and with very strong credibility that otherwise –through conventional paid advertising- cannot be bought.
Enough said, let’s come to the new business (established this year) that stricked me the most in the past months, with both its business idea and with the continuous social media links they are building. It is: http://hollrr.com/ . Its idea is rewarding consumers for promoting (“hollrring”) the products they love. Quoting the managers of Hollrr from Hollrr blog, “Hollrr is about building community. It’s about connecting Tribes of people who are passionate about small companies and products. It’s about connecting those Tribes with the Entrepreneur behind those products. It’s about recognizing Mavens who are great at spotting awesome new products.” I will not write how the website is run, but suggest to check it out yourself and get a feeling of it.
Hollrr rewards both consumers and companies. By giving early adopters of a product a chance to speak out their views on the product and form tribes, Hollrr gives consumers the psychological reward of being an influencer on others. This, I think, is a total empowerment of the consumer. Consumer feels the power that s/he can have a say on what the product fulfills, does not fulfill, how it should be modified, etc. along with all sorts of personal feelings / thoughts about it. Another huge reward is achieving reputation and admiration by others. By spotting great products earlier than other people, “Hollrrers” can find the chance to socially signal their trendy attitudes. The site succeeds to further motivate this by letting users follow their favorite “Hollrrer”s. There is also the financial reward awaiting the consumer, which may even come secondary after the psychological ones I mentioned and it is described on the site, so I will not write about it in detail. Hollrr also offers incalculable benefits to the companies which cannot allocate a sufficiently high advertisement budget. Here, especially relatively small sized companies benefit a lot, since they get the chance to have their product heard by large groups as long as their product is good enough to get a certain amount of tribe members.
Consumers are able to promote a new product to others via their blogs, Twitter (http://twitter.com/hollrr) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Hollrr?ref=search&sid=535438423.3711483283..1 ).
Hollrr has also created a blog (http://hollrr.tumblr.com/) the function of which is stated as: “to keep track of what’s happening in Hollrr”, but it does not only give information about the website and the company, but at the same time continues its business model here as well, for example they post “this week’s hot Hollrrers” so as to reward its users in a way (as always!).
Well, this post sounded a bit like the advertisement of a new advertising platform, but trust me, I wrote all this stuff just because I’m amazed by what this site offers to both consumers and companies and how it is also able to mash up a simple style of “word of mouse” with other social networking sites.
