The New York Times, June 25, 2008
by Stuart Elliott

For the second time in a week, a study has been released that concludes that the word-of-mouth conversations generated offline may be deemed more credible and positive by consumers than those conversations held online.

A study being released on Wednesday morning by the Keller Fay Group and the media agency OMD, which is part of the Omnicom Group, compares the effectiveness of word of mouth — also known as buzz — when it is conducted in online and offline venues.

The study, being released at a conference sponsored by the Advertising Research Foundation, found that conversations face to face or by telephone were deemed more highly credible than those done online. Offline communication had more purely positive content, the study found, and was more likely to lead to consumers expressing a strong intent to purchase a product under discussion.

Yankelovich and Sequent Partners released a study last Wednesday that concluded advertisements appearing in offline media like television are much more likely to have made a positive impression with consumers than ads running in online media.

Brad Fay, chief operating officer at Keller Fay in New Brunswick, NJ, attributed the results of the study his company conducted with OMD to factors like credibility.

“We are more likely to believe” what is said by people we know, Mr. Fay said, “than something over the Internet.”

The Keller Fay/OMD study also examined the roles played by various media, traditional and digital, in disseminating word of mouth.

“TV leads every channel,” Mr. Fay said, followed by the Internet. In third place are point-of-sale materials like displays in stores or product packages, followed by newspapers.

There are of course blended sources of conversations, he added, like when people who like a brand get information about it from the brand’s Web site and then “disseminate largely face to face” from family and friends.