On Blogenberg, I’ve talked a lot about the direction we are heading, much of it built around Word of Mouth Public Relations (WOMPR). We’ve done some walking of that talk — quite a bit actually, for a number of clients. We’re about to start walking that talk deep into Pennsylvania coal country.

We’re working with a rape and victim assistance center that’s trying to address sexual abuse by helping young people decide to wait to have sex — there’s a lot of young girl, older (much) guy relations going on, all of it, almost by definition, exploitive and harmful. One of their strategies is to help parents talk to their kids about avoiding unhealthy risk behaviors, especially sex. We’re building a WOMPR campaign throughout the county to support the effort.

The town is old enough that the monument in the center of town is to men who served and died in the Civil War. We spent two hours there last week meeting with the victim assistance center, exploring the target audience (parents) and the dynamics of the issue. We discussed organizational and individual influencers in the community; the important role that multiple generations plays in the community; how parents are, and are not, utilizing technology; the target audience’s relationships with institutions and other families; open and closed networks and potential points of entry. We explored various messages. We are now looking at detailed county demographic data, and reviewing interviews conducted with local parents.

The next step is to develop a comprehensive strategy document that will discuss, in great detail, the challenge at hand and present multiple WOMPR strategies that will need to work together to effectively generate word of mouth. Throughout the effort, we’ll be learning. I’ve written in earlier Blogenbergs that what makes our shop different is that we are a learning organization: we are constantly working to understand the quickly changing communications environment.

We’ll be learning lots in Pennsylvania coal country.

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