Debate Over Word of Mouth Advertising Rages

Over at Adland, DMC's Justin Kirby voices his opinion on the recent New York Times Magazine article on word of mouth advertising in which Boston-based BzzAgent is featured. Controversy swirls around the term transparancy and whether or not, as participants in a word of mouth organization, to disclose true motivations: trying to sell product by convincing people to give it a try.

The only reason natural word of mouth and viral distribution of information, which is nothing more than the forwarding of information from one to another - a behaviour which has occured since living beings learned to communicate - has been commercialized is because the advertising techniques of today and yesteryear no longer work.

Marketers are grasping at straws, fighting to keep their heads above water as consumers submerge them in an in a growing effort to shut them up and out of their lives for good. It's all simply an ongoing, multi-billion dollar battle of wills between marketer and consumer.

Marketers want eyeballs. Consumers want to tear marketer's eyeballs from their sockets. The model is broken and it is just getting worse.

We are in the pre-orgasmic throes of the Great Advertising Flame Out - a dynamic period just prior to the next great model which, perhaps - though unlikely, will rescue us from the capitalistic mess we are in right now.