Altoids breath mints had been around for 200 years, but suddenly their popularity skyrocketed. How did this happen? The revival began when the mint began to attract a devoted following among smokers and coffee drinkers who hung out in the blossoming Seattle club scene during the 1980s. Until 1993, when Kraft bought manufacturer Callard & Bowers, only those “in the know” sucked the mints. The brand’s marketing manager persuaded Kraft to hire advertising agency Leo Burnett to develop a modest promotional campaign. The agency decided to publicize the candy with subway posters sporting retro imagery and other “low-tech” media to avoid making the product seem mainstream—that would turn off the original audience. As young people started to tune into this “retro” treat, its popularity rocketed.

As the Altoids success story illustrates, “buzz” makes a hit product. Word of mouth (WOM) is product information that individuals transmit to other individuals. Because we get the word from people we know, WOM tends to be more reliable and trustworthy than messages from more formal marketing channels. And, unlike advertising, WOM often comes with social pressure to conform to these recommendations. Ironically, despite all the money that marketers pump into lavish ads, WOM is far more powerful: It influences two-thirds of all consumer goods sales.

So, how can marketers harness the enormous power of WOM? In the “old days” (a few years ago), a toy company would launch a new product by unveiling it during a Spring trade fair, and then it would run a November–December saturation television ad campaign during cartoon prime time to sell the toy to kids. In contrast, consider the Picoo Z helicopter, a $30 toy helicopter made by Silverlit Toys in Hong Kong. In March 2007, a Google search for the Picoo produced more than 109,000 URLs, whereas the URLs for Silverlit Toys was more than 597,000, with many of those links pointing to major online global gift retailers, such as Hammacher-Schlemmer and Toys-R-Us.

Do you think this huge exposure was the result of a meticulously planned promotional strategy? Think again. By most accounts, a 28-year-old tech worker in Chicago started the Picoo Z buzz when he bought his helicopter after reading about it on a hobbyist message board. A few months later, he uploaded his homemade video of the toy on YouTube. Within two weeks, 15 of his friends bought the toy, and they, in turn, posted their own videos and pointed viewers to the original video. Internet retailers who troll online conversations for fresh and exciting buzz identified the toy and started adding their own links to the clips. In just a few short months, there were hundreds of Picoo Z videos, and more than a million people viewed them.

So, how can you stimulate word of mouth? Consider enlisting brand ambassadors to announce a new brand or service. AT&T sent its ambassadors to high-traffic areas of California and New Jersey, doing random favors such as handing dog biscuits to people walking their dogs and providing binoculars to concertgoers to promote its new AT&T Local Service. Hyatt Hotels unleashed 100 bellhops in Manhattan, who spent the day opening doors, carrying packages, and handing out pillow mints to thousands of consumers.

Or go for viral marketing, the strategy of getting visitors to a Web site to forward information on the site to their friends to make still more consumers aware of the product—usually by creating online content that is entertaining or just plain weird. To promote a use for a razor that it could never discuss on TV, Philips launched a Norelco Web site, shaveeverywhere.com. The ad features a guy in a bathrobe explaining how to use the shaver in places, well, not on your head. The site uses pictures of fruit and vegetables to refer to male body parts. This viral strategy did its job, as thousands of people worldwide forwarded the URL to their friends. Catch the buzz.