Conversational Capital - Overview

Overview

Based on their experiences with some of the world's recognized generators of word-of-mouth, the authors behind Conversational Capital began to realize that experiences had residual value—value that extended further than mere memories but instead resided in the realm of identity-shaping and storytelling. That is to say, when an experience was sufficiently powerful or transformative for an individual, they felt compelled to make the experience part of their own life story, and thereby propagate the story of the experience as part of their own (and now more exciting) identity. With this in mind, Bertrand Cesvet, Tony Babinski and Eric Alper began to deconstruct the antecedents to word-of-mouth. Invariably, they found that the elements that gave rise to the conversations of consumers consisted of eight possible drivers. Critically, these elements fed into doing two things for the experience in question: 1) making it meaningful and 2) making it intense.

The authors of Conversational Capital share these eight key ingredients to embedding the makings of word-of-mouth into every consumer encounter with brands. They term these elements the Eight Engines of Conversational Capital.