Innovation Adoption vs Word of Mouth

The buzz phrase 'word of mouth marketing' has been pretty hot over the past few years and understandably so, after all, 'colleague recommendation' is regularly cited as the greatest influence over a physician adopting a new therapy. Also WoM has the allure of being cost efficient and contagious - very sexy indeed.

However, while the flashy 'WoM' turns heads and gets all the attention, it's the greyer figure of 'Innovation Adoption' that I've come to realise is really the big player sitting quietly, but omnisciently, in the background.

Of course, it's not actually an either / or situation with these two. 'Innovation Adoption' describes the whole process that someone goes through in adopting an innovation (like a new medicine), and Word of Mouth can be a player in a number of the steps within the process.

Where I'm going to with all of this is that in the quest for a marketing model that describes how pharma marketing really works, Word of Mouth is a lot better than the poor rip off the outdated consumer model. However, it's really Innovation Adoption that's the daddy, and it might sound a little strange, but I've been getting pretty excited about it.

This has been going on for a while now (should I tell my wife?) but some recent work with a client in the telecomms industry rekindled the fire. On the face of things you might say telecoms and pharma don't have a lot in common. But by applying adoption of innovation principles to their product, we not only got some great insights to their challenges and opportunities, but also saw a lot of direct parallels between the industries.

All driven by the fact that both sectors are in the business of driving the adoption of technical innovations, not selling a new brand of frozen peas or alco-pop.

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