Word of Mouth Marketing

Cynthia Typaldos, who runs the webcommunities group, pointed to another article on buzz marketing. Cynthia founded RealCommunities and GolfWeb and has also done a million other impressive things.  The article:

What’s the Buzz About Buzz Marketing?

This article made me think about a conversation we had on the AdMarketing list some time ago. Then, I posed the question: [AM] Is too much talk a good thing?
The input we got was inter testing. Here’s the summary from that conversation:

AdMarketing discussion recap (or, who said what)

Dave Balter, founder of BzzAgent, points to his Word of Mouth Manifesto in his BzzAgent Investor/Advisor Update.

There’s a reason the subservient chicken didn’t increase Chicken nugget sales, why the Segway (a.k.a "IT", a.k.a. "Ginger") hasn’t changed the world despite drool-worthy P.R., and why Richard Branson descended a New York City skyscraper in a nude suit. And it all comes down to the distinctions among Viral, Buzz, and Word of Mouth marketing.

UPDATES: the BzzAgent blog also points to this slashdot conversation on Open Source Word-of-Mouth Advertising.

Continuing the word of mouth marketing debates most recently started by BzzAgent, a friend over at Fleishman Hillard sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal. This time, we’re talking about transparency and ethics in academia.

As the article points out, the practice of professors being paid to write editorials and express certain views, is a PR tactic that’s been around for a long time…

If a professor takes money from a company and then argues in the media for a position the company favors, is he an independent expert — or a paid shill?