Cabbies spread the word via WOM

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Just over a month ago when I first joined the team at Wolfstar I had never really heard about Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing or social media. It didn’t take me long to realise how major they have become and I have started to notice how quickly they are growing in the UK.

While flicking through The Times I noticed the article “Spiel at the wheel? You must’ve had that adman in the front of your cab.” This article is about how London’s black cab drivers are becoming the latest channels for word of mouth advertising. This caught my eye because I find it to be such an unexpected, but clever, way of marketing.

Tourist boards such as the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and the Tourist Board of Melbourne have been sending taxi drivers on all expenses paid holidays. These are paid for out of their marketing budgets, in the hope that they will promote it to people. Taxi Promotions UK are currently launching a new service: WOMAD (Word of Mouth Advertising). They believe that many more products will eventually find a way to use this channel of promotion.

Intrigued by this I started to research further into the world of WOM and learned from various websites such as WOMMA that word of mouth marketing seems to be becoming one of the most effective form of marketing. It is constantly formulating new strategies, tactics and channels to reach all audiences instead of sticking to traditional ways of advertising such as on the TV or billboards.

I personally think this form of marketing is really clever and disagree that this is a way of deceiving people. Audiences in this country becoming more cynical and less receptive to straight up advertising and clever methods such as this one are needed to get a message across and it seems to be working.