The Mainstreaming of WOM?

In his State of the Industry address, Andy Sernovitz (WOMMA CEO) mentioned the long-term goal of having WOM become a mainstream marketing tool.

Guy Kawasaki commented during his post keynote Q&A that we may be overly optimistic believing WOM will become mainstream. He went on to say that it’ll take a whole generation of marketers to die before WOM goes mainstream.

Hmm … what if WOM becomes mainstream? Will it become like all the other once tired and true and now tired and trite marketing tactics that we all find to be ineffective?

My thinking is WOM’s goal should be to become the best and not the biggest. We shouldn’t work to have WOM become the biggest, most used marketing tactic but instead … continuing working to have WOM be the best, most effective marketing tactic.