Word-of-mouth factors in Ireland after all at Piaras Kelly PR

Word-of-mouth factors in Ireland after all

Published August 8th, 2006 in PR in Ireland

David Harvey was in the office to tell us about City Channel last week. City Channel is one of the leading media organisations in Ireland when it comes to ethnic programming and he announced that they were about to launch another program for one of Ireland’s new communities, the Filipino audience.

What really caught my attention though was what he said about how he was going to promote it, or rather the lack of promotion. He had told a couple of Filipinos about it and said that the whole community would know about it by this week because of the incredible word-of-mouth that exists among the Filipino population in Ireland. The mobile phone is the most powerful communications tool for them.

It’s interesting to note that ethnic minorities are likely to be the primary drivers of word-of-mouth marketing in Ireland.

Technorati Tags: Piaras Kelly, PR, Public Relations, Word of Mouth

5 Responses to “Word-of-mouth factors in Ireland after all”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Tom Aug 8th, 2006 at 10:03 am

Ethnical programming? Is that a combination of ethical and ethnic TV? I don’t know if the word of mouth effort will be driven by ethnic minorities. I think that there are a number of factors that have helped this effort. The first is the reputation that City Channel has among the migrant community. People know that they make an effort to cater for their particular group.

The second is that the product is obviously filling a need. There is no ‘mainstream’ outlet for the filipino community at the moment, nowhere where they can get relevant news, entertainment and nowhere to have a major outlet for their cultural identity. So this TV channel is filling a big, community driven need.

These two factors, aided and abetted by the mobile phone, is helping to spread the word about this new channel. Rather than being an example of word of mouth marketing, I think it is closer to a community support effort, an undriven, spontaneous show of support for this effort. I think that word-of-mouth marketing is a more targetted, planned effort than this incident seems to be.
2 Piaras Aug 8th, 2006 at 6:02 pm

Thanks for pointing out the typo
Definitely think this fills a need, but I do think that word-of-mouth marekting is a better tool for new audiences such as the Filipino community, purely because they’re so close knit. The Coty Channel example illustrates this nicely because as you say WOM marketing is a more targetted and planned effort. If this took off so well, imagine what could be achieved with a proper strategy
3 Cian Ginty Aug 8th, 2006 at 8:41 pm

“There is no ‘mainstream’ outlet for the filipino community at the moment, nowhere where they can get relevant news, entertainment and nowhere to have a major outlet for their cultural identity”.

That’s possibly also the reason why word-of-mouth is so effect within the Filipino community in Ireland. There is currently no (?) other news source for their community here.

Go ease on me if for PR/marketing types this is so blinding obvious it doesn’t need to be stated. I’m merely an outsider looking in.
4 Piaras Aug 8th, 2006 at 9:33 pm

There’s publications for the Chinese community, but the Internet remains the best medium to communicate with them.
5 luzvim Aug 13th, 2006 at 10:04 pm

One source of information and news for the excellent Filipinos in Ireland is TFC, on the Atlantic Bird3 satellite. However, RTE should reflect the multiculturalism in Ireland in its presenters and programs.
Shame about the recent racist citizenship referendum though, which, of course, must be ignored because the outcome is illegal under International law.
Says a lot abot the amnesia of the Paddys who conveniently forget about the their fellow Paddys in the UK in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
I know, I was there.