merhaba from istanbul

Merhaba from Istanbul!

Hello from Istanbul, Turkey! I am here for the First Word of Mouth

Marketing Conference in this country's rich history. The conference is

taking place at the swanky Swissotel Istanbul European banks of the

Bosphorus and hosted by MediaCat.

The conference starts tomorrow and will feature three speakers from

the U.S. (Dave Balter, George Silverman, and myself) and then two

people from Turkey (Dr. Yanki Yazgan and Renan Tavukcuoglu). My speech

will focus on WOM measurement (the three key points will be social

media analysis, tracking conversational reach and outcomes, and the

pros and cons of using likelihood to recommend scores to measure

advocacy and ROI). Speaker bios are here. The organizers are expecting

400-500 [[UPDATE: 500-600!]] people and it's received quite a bit of

press coverage here.

For example, this morning (Monday) I was interviewed for a business

show that airs on CNN Turk called "Business Lunch." I was asked to

explain what WOM marketing was, how it can be measured, and what

companies in Turkey need to know about it. I hope to get the video as

it was my first live TV interview (the last TV interview I did was for

the Chronicle and I had the opportunity to ask "Can we try that one

more time?" -- live TV is much more of a rush).

Here's what I have learned about WOM and social media in Turkey thus

far, mainly from a representative from the UnitePR agency who made

arrangements for the CNN interview:

- Traditional hotbeds of word-of-mouth activity are the

marketplaces, such as the grand bazaar, and across the streets from

balcony (cumba) to the next.

- Turkish people pride themselves on their rich historical

traditions of being passionate storytellers (think Homer and

Herodotus).

- On the social media front, blogs are around though they seem to

be used much for discussing news items and politics. WOM seems to

be most amplified via e-mail chains and groups. (Spam apparently

used to be a problem here but due to the companies responsible

realizing it really wasn't that effective, and better filtering

technology, it's not such a big deal anymore.) Apparently there are

some discussion forums that are popular discussing the issues of

moms and kids. There don't seem to be any firms currently analyzing

social media in Turkey now, at least to my knowledge (Nathan

Gilliat hasn't identified any here yet). But I think it's only a

matter of time.

- Rumors about certain companies seem to be especially prevalent,

and most often spread through e-mail chains.

I hope to learn more especially from the Dr. Yazgan and Ms.

Tavukcuoglu. Looking forward to tomorrow!

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