Word of Mouth Marketing Association CEO Andy Sernovitz asked a pivotal question at the first-ever summit for professional Word of Mouth marketers:

"Do we, as WOM practitioners, want to be viewed as the voice of the consumer or manipulators? As marketing pros — or experimenters on the edge?"

It was a good question as companies of all sorts look further into the world of buzz, searching for ways to reach new customers and sustain existing relationships.

"In order for the WOM industry to grow and flourish," Sernovitz said, "it is obvious that we must vigorously pursue the former in each case, and vigorously reject the latter."

The claim that any attention is good attention no longer holds up. Consumers put cold-call phone sales out of business and we have our best people working to kill email spam — where spam is defined by the recipient, not the sender.

When marketing is intrusive, we tune it out. When marketing is outrageous, we pay attention, but only briefly and for reasons that don’t produce sustainable sales. When marketing is deceptive, we lash out at whoever we believe betrayed our trust.

Not that there are plenty of examples that seem to contradict this notion in the short term; but show us a business that has endured by producing bad word of mouth for itself.

Jesus said, "Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." (Matthew 5:37). And isn’t that what we suspected all along?

• How about where you work? Does Yes mean Yes?
• What do your customers say about you (HINT: How much of your business comes from positive referrals?)
• What can you do in the next 30 days to create positive word of mouth about what you do? How does that compare to what you’ve done in the last 30 days?