Social Marketing Company Makes Word-Of-Mouth Effective For Brands

The social marketing company Wildfire was founded in 2008 by Benjamin Duvall and Dr. Christoph Zrenner in Singapore. Don’t confuse this with the U.S-based Wildfire which provides plug-and-play Facebook marketing solutions. They have the same name but are two different companies.

Wildfire, called Xing Xing Huo in Chinese, provides word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing solutions for clients specifically in China. I stumbled onto the company’s booth at TechVenture yesterday and found the service pretty interesting.

Claire Pribula, a partner at Wildfire, explained to me that the company has over 100,000 influencers in their network. Interestingly, the company calls them “Sparks” and they are basically volunteers who are somewhat influential and passionate about a particular products/brand — say Pepsi, Dove, or Toyota.

Their tasks are simple: if some shit happens to a brand, they will be engaged to help the brand extinguish the fire. But note that they are not paid. Instead, they will be educated with the correct information to help the brand fight the battle through word-of-mouth.

For example, if there’s a negative buzz in China stating that brand XYZ’s products are poisonous, enthusiastic sparks will be given XYZ products and information to prove that such negative buzz is nonsensical. With the correct information, sparks will counter argue whatever bad buzz is happening on the web, be it on Sina Weibo, BBS or Renren.

Hmm… you must be wondering why sparks would do that. Well, Pribula explained that firstly, these people are enthusiastic about the brand and also feel happy when they help to quash any rumor that isn’t true. She also emphasizes that sparks aren’t paid and the company will never force them to write good reviews or make positive remarks. That sounds reasonable, but still, there could be grey areas.

Alternatively, sparks could also be engaged to try out new products and promote them on the web. This is pretty much similar to what PR people call seeding or seed blogging.

Wildfire also has social tracking and analyzing tools to track the mood of conversations surrounding the brands. So if something goes down, they will be the first to know about it and can help their client defend against negative buzz, if needed. The mood analysis is done by machines but is double-checked by humans in case of sarcasm or irrelevant results contaminating the real data. Also note that Wildfire’s analyzer tool tracks in Chinese which is probably way harder than tracking buzz in English.

Oh, and one more thing. Although Wildfire is founded in Singapore, its service was first launched in China. Pribula said that the company intentionally aims to conquer the tough Chinese market first before moving on to smaller markets like Singapore. That’s a smart move considering WOM marketing and social tracking in Chinese were pretty new back in 2008. But that’s of course based on hindsight. The founders have the vision to see that, though.

Wildfire is backed by Ideas Ventures, the Singapore Government (MDA/IDF), and several angel investors in China and Asia Pacific region.