Word of Mouth Becoming a Reliable Source

In Citizen Marketers the authors claim "People are the message when people say "word of mouth" is the most influential form of media on their decision making" (26). As a college student who is often on a budget, I am an advocate of word of mouth advice. This includes my newest guilty pleasure Bump It. At first I used to laugh at the ridiculous infomercials, but then one of my friend's bought it for New Year's Eve. The woman now swears by this product and wears it at least four or five times a week. After seeing it in person and how simple it was to use, I decided to buy one. In the past three weeks I have developed a love for my Bump It and now I am trying to con all my friends in to buying one as well. I love the simplicity of the product, because it allows me to do something different with my hair in less than five minutes. Had Bump It have hired some celebrity to endorse the product, I highly doubt I would have purchased one. It seems that commercials with celebrities attempting to sell the product are becoming harder and harder to believe. Especially when it is a beauty related product, because we all know they had hair and make-up people to make them look like that. Companies forget that the majority of us are on the go and often need to beautify ourselves for the world on our own in a short amount of time.

Chapter one also mentions that "more than half of Americans avoid anything from a company that overwhelms them with advertising" (26). Can somebody please send Geico a memo that running commercials at least once a commercial break during my favorite shows is not going to convince me to give them a try. Instead it makes me cringe when I think about them and would rather go without car insurance if they were the last car company on the planet! Their current campaign with the money that is watching you has sent me over the edge and encourages me to change the channel whenever I hear the song being played.