Ivo Laurin, head of the Czech Republic’s only word-of-mouth marketing agency, on new ways to reach consumers

Ivo Laurin is the director of Outbreak, the Czech Republic’s only word-of-mouth marketing agency. Instead of what’s called above-the-line or ATL advertising, meaning traditional methods such as billboards and TV commercials, Mr Laurin aims to engage the consumer in conversations about the product that is at the center of his campaign. And with some success. Word-of-mouth is sometimes referred to as WoM, and last year Outbreak received a bronze Wommy, an American award honoring great work in this cutting-edge form of advertising. Ivo Laurin talks about what word-of-mouth entails, how it differs from conventional advertising and what first piqued his interest in the industry.

Ivo Laurin

“Fifteen years ago, I saw a TV advertisement filmed by [Jan] Svěrák, the young Czech director at that time, and it was a Saab commercial and it was beautiful.

“I was in my first year at university and I thought: I have to do this, I have to try. And I sent three resumes to three different ad agencies in Prague, and one of them answered, and so I was in.”

And since then, you have founded your own word-of-mouth advertising or marketing agency. I think a lot of our listeners may not know what exactly word-of-mouth marketing is. Maybe you could explain what it is?

“Word-of-mouth is nothing new; it’s not a buzz word of the moment. It’s simply when someone is happy with a service or a product they usually suggest to their friends and co-workers to try that service or product as well, because he or she was happy.

“What is word-of-mouth marketing? It’s basically tools and activities that drive people to word-of-mouth more frequently, more heavily, towards more people.”

Would you say that word-of-mouth is something that happens mostly online, or has been boosted by the internet, where customers can review products, or do you think it’s something that is also very present in the off-line realm?

“Well, certainly social media and the internet will be playing an increasing role in word-of-mouth spreading, but at this moment, and it’s the same in the United States and the Czech Republic, the word-of-mouth is most usually spread within the off-line world. Something like 80 percent of the WoM conversations are happening off-line.”

How does the Czech Republic compare to larger markets such as Germany or the United States?

“Well, we were quite surprised, three years ago we ran a study that was supposed to reveal how word-of-mouth works in the Czech Republic, and we saw, to our surprise, quite a lot of similarities in comparison with the United States market.

“So, as I mentioned, for example 80 percent of WoM is happening offline. We were quite surprised to see that the majority of word-of-mouth conversations are positive and the number of positive ones is quite similar to the United States market. So there are quite a lot of similarities and I guess it’s because the word-of-mouth is quite a universal phenomenon.”

So what can word-of-mouth marketing do for a client that conventional means of advertising cannot?

“It’s all about the level of engagement which you can get from an ATL (above the line) campaign versus a word-of-mouth marketing campaign or spreading. In the ATL, most of the time the top level of engagement you can get is the time that the audience spends with your message on TV or when passing a billboard or something like that.

Illustrative photo: Štěpánka Budková

“Whereas with word-of-mouth, you benefit from conversations that spread from someone to someone else and then other people. The level of engagement usually lasts longer, the average word-of-mouth conversation lasts six minutes, once again that’s very similar in the Czech Republic and the United States, and the number of generations that the message gets to through the talking between people is definitely larger than in the case of ATL campaigns.”

Maybe to take a specific example, I have heard that your company’s Bazal campaign was quite successful?

“Bazal was a beautiful case of a client who was brave enough to invest a big part of their yearly budget into a pretty huge word-of-mouth marketing project that lasted a couple of months. We decided to launch a new football beer, because the brand is sponsoring one of the biggest football clubs in the Czech Republic, Baník Ostrava.

“They usually used traditional channels to build on that sponsorship. What we suggested to do was to launch a new football beer for all the football lovers and beer drinkers in the region of Ostrava, but not actually to create the beer behind the walls of a brewery, but offer everyone in the region to join in into the creation of this beer.

“The project was divided into several waves. In the first one, people could taste two beer samples and decide which one is the better for a football beer. And in the next round, they suggested a name, and then they voted for the top-scoring names. They chose one of the names, which was Ostrava Bazal, which was based on the place where the stadium of the team is located in Ostrava. A couple of the fans were actually shot and they are now on the labels of the beer bottles.

“So we had a pretty successful campaign, which resulted in thousands of people in the creation. And the sales results were great as well, so great that the client decided to keep this beer in its portfolio, even though in the beginning the creation of this beer was really just a marketing project and the beer was not supposed to live too long.”

And lastly, with this kind of marketing, what are some of the ethical concerns that you have to be aware of?

“Well, I think the number one rule is to always be transparent, to always state what it is for, what brand stands behind the project. We have seen a couple of cases in the Czech Republic where agencies hired students to comment in internet forums and chats as if they were a regular consumer but they were actually briefed by an agency. And that is something that’s completely inacceptable and became illegal in the United Kingdom in the past year. And it’s something that we of course do not do.”