Each August or September, friend and fellow News-Banner columnist Chet Baumgartner and I make a trip to Ball State to visit our alma mater. I’m not sure when we started making our annual roadtrip back to visit campus, but it has turned into a tradition that we rarely — if ever — miss each year.
Part of the tradition is returning to the place that was our home away from home from 1999-2003 at Ball State — the Art and Journalism Building. We didn’t spend much time in the art section but instead logged our hours in the journalism section as we learned about all of journalism’s facets — writing, editing, design, photography, law, ethics and advertising.
Our study of journalism was well-rounded and even included areas we didn’t plan to pursue after graduation such as advertising.
There isn’t much I remember from the advertising class that we had to take, but one of the professor’s lectures has always stood out to me. It popped back in my mind last week as we walked past the room where we had the class.
The professor began the lecture by asking the class if anyone knew the most powerful form of advertising. The first few guesses were incorrect, which probably showed the professor right away that most of us had not fully completed the reading prior to class.
Oops.
Eventually, however, a classmate came up with the correct answer: word-of-mouth advertising.
In other words, this type of advertising is when someone you know talks about a company’s products. This type of advertising or marketing is so powerful because when someone you know recommends a product or business, you’re likely to spend money on the product or at the business if you trust the person making the recommendation.
It made a lot of sense to me back then and still does today, as we tend to put a lot of faith in recommendations from those we trust.
When we were in college in the early 2000s, social media had yet to make its debut. Instead, we were surrounded by email and AOL Instant messenger. Back then, word-of-mouth advertising tended to be exactly that — recommendations you told each other face to face or over the phone.
Social media, however, has taken that concept to levels most of us could never have imagined in the early 2000s.
While I don’t post a lot of Facebook compared to some of my social media friends, I do go online often when I need a recommendation.
Earlier this summer, I needed to find a tailor to alter some pants since the place I used to go to for alternations went out of business. Within minutes of asking for recommendations online, several social media friends had responded with recommendations.
When my wife and I adopted our Bernese mountain dog a couple of years ago, our 5-year-old pooch was in desperate need of a trip to the groomer. Within a couple of hours of asking for recommendations on Facebook, we had a plethora of suggestions.
And just last week a Facebook friend posted that Home Depot had come out with the 2024 version of the spooky life-size LED ghost golden retriever that is the perfect Halloween decoration for our front porch. We bought one last year and never would have known there was an updated one had it not been for word-of-mouth advertising.
Earlier this summer I read an article online about how some businesses were trying to think of more out-of-the-box ways to attract new customers and retain longstanding customers.
I couldn’t help but think back to the one and only introduction to advertising class that I had to take at Ball State for my journalism degree.
When consumers have a good experience at a business or with a product, they’ll be among the first to recommend it to others. When they don’t, expect the opposite.
Advertising 101.
I might have skipped some of the reading in my advertising class, but that day’s lesson on the power of word-of-mouth advertising and marketing is as true today as it was back then.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
