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Advertising is best by word of mouth

Posted by Brian from Shawnee on April 06, 2005

In Reply to: Advertising is best by word of mouth posted by ESC on April 05, 2005

: :
: : Is this phrase still in effect these days? Does anyone have anything logical to explain this phrase.I'm studying visual culture in humanities & just wondering if this phrase is applied to any ads or commercials with the use of the internet and other technology available.

: All I have to contribute is a book that describes how fads, etc., are started in modern culture:

: TIPPING POINT -- ".major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he (Malcolm Gladwell) argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point." Summary from the dustjacket of "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 2000.

This phrase in the vernacular form "the best Advertising is word of mouth" yields 2,380 hits on Google. So yeah, it's still in use.

And I don't know much about marketing, but from Googling around on this topic it seems that "word of mouth" is also related to "buzz campaigns" and "viral marketing". Those are hipper phrases one might want to use when discussing consumer-2-consumer marketing in today's on-demand, gotta-have-it-yesterday e-biz global community.

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