Ghost of Midnight

Trust in Word-of-Mouth Increasing

Hearing something from someone you know is powerful… increasingly so with every new website, cable TV channel, etc. vying for your attention.   From a New York Times op-ed (thanks to Neal Polachek)…

Public trust in all kinds of communication is eroding, with a notable exception: word of mouth. A Roper poll found the number of people who said they get good ideas and information from television ads declined from 1977 to 2003, while the number who said the same about word of mouth increased by 25 percentage points.

Our mid-December survey of Iowa voters found 38 percent saying they trusted information provided by TV ads, while 69 percent trusted “comments from friends, relatives and colleagues.”

This jibes with our experience with Front Porch Forum, which a neighbor recently described as “word-of-mouth accelerated.”