Two great examples of how word of mouth is changing promotion and marketing.
First, Amazon's Jeff Bezos in Wired Magazine:
Yes,
more and more money will go into making a great customer experience,
and less will go into shouting about the service. Word of mouth is
becoming more powerful. If you offer a great service, people find out.
Second, Jason Fried on 37Signals' recent launch of Ta-Da Lists, a clever, free, online list manager that is also sharable.
In
just the first 24 hours of operation, and just through blog
word-of-mouth (and subsequent real word of mouth), over 2500 people
have signed up for Ta-da List accounts. We haven’t even sent out a note
to our few-thousand strong mailing list. 2500 accounts started from a
single blog post on SvN.
How can you get people talking about your organization?
[Leave It Behind]