2. Require that Spitzer participants reveal their ties to the corporate marketing program right up front before they make a recommendation. Irving Silberstein, marketing director for the Spitzer Group.a growing regional marketing and corporate communications firm, was hard at work on an exciting project. He was designing Spitzer’s first word-of-mouth campaign for an important client, a manufacturer of beauty products.

In a matter of just a few years, word-of-mouth advertising campaigns morphed from a small fringe specialty to a mainstream marketing technique embraced by no less than consumer products giant Procter & Gamble

(P&G). The basic idea was simple, really. You harnessed the power of existing social networks to sell your products and services. The place to start, Irving knew, was to take a close look at how P&G’s in-house unit, Vocalpoint, conducted its highly successful campaigns, both for its own products and those of its clients.