No, not my mother in law or the village public house - Jack Trout to be specific. His recent piece in Forbes casts doubt over the importance of WOM as a marketing vehicle. He makes the following observation;

"I want to see that message delivered. Buzz can get your name mentioned but you can't depend on much else. Not too many mouths will do a stand-up commercial about your product vs. its competitor. Nor will they check with you in advance on what to say."

All sounds a bit old school to me. Brands are not really in control anymore and will fail to convince a new breed of web-savvy consumers with "stand-up commercials" if the consumer voice is saying something else.

Jack asks, "How many people really want to chatter about products? Do you really want to talk about your toothpaste...?"

OK, most of us don't tirelessly blog about toothpaste (although see here and here for results from today for the scoop on Aquafresh) but the point here is that where there's less conversation, individual experiences become even noisier.

It's also easy to underestimate how much "backyard chat" actually goes on online. For example, Jack would be very surprised at the volume of nappy-related communication we evaluate for one of our large retail clients.

And, no, I'm not talking s**t....