The part of me that hates all all-or-nothing thinking prickles at the theory that all marketing should consist of creating ten champions who then pass their enthusiasm on to ten champions-in-law who then further spread news of your product.

1. So Apple got it wrong? The iphone launch was message-controlled, high production, high budget, unilateral mass media.  Apple’s enthusiasts are truly evangelical. Yet when money (and jobs) were on the line, Apple sold to them, not through them.

2.  Examples, please? Google thrived on word of mouth and word of web, but Google’s base service is free, high involvement, geek-centric, and entangled with one’s day.  Word of  mouth is crucial to a bunch of businesses—from research to restaurants—but to tell them to shut down all other marketing seems glib and dangerous.  

3. Is signal strength an issue? As people get more and more distant from you, how is the enthusiasm maintained? 

4. Do people spend a lot of their time promoting other people’s products? It’s as if we’ve decided that those hokey scenarios in 1960s commercials where one housewife converts another to the magic of some counter polish reflect real life. 

5. By overstating the value of enthusiast marketing, are we going to discredit it for the products where it makes a lot of sense? In addition to its b2b uses,I think this model has great applicability to the arts, where people become deeply involved with the product.  

Note: My palms perspired when I entered the headline of this post. It was meant to vividly make a point, but it was not meant as an irreverence.