One of the best lessons I learned during my bartending days (besides a martini-shaking technique that makes them cold enough to skate on) came courtesy of an industry-savvy pub owner. “If someone has a good time here,” he told me, “they’ll tell a friend. If someone has a bad time here, they’ll tell ten friends.”

Such is the driving mentality behind word-of-mouth marketing. If people have a positive experience, they’re bound to share it. If they have a negative experience, they absolutely will. Human nature.

The funny thing is that you, as an organization, have no control over the feedback. You can only control the product or service you provide. And if you try too hard to sell yourself, you’ll get picked apart if you don’t deliver. Examples of this pepper the web. In their earliest incarnations, company websites were little more than over-amped billboards or Yellow Page listings. People threw up all kinds of affirmations – “We’re the best, just ask us!” – and maybe that flew for a minute, just because we were mesmerized by the fact that you were online.

Jump ahead a decade. Now, visitors have become users. They’re looking for a fulfilling experience as much as for information, and they’re the ones who are going to decide if it’s good or not. Oh, and once they’ve made their decision, they have a near-infinite means of sharing their p.o.v. That’s the muscle behind web-driven word-of-mouth marketing.

This is scaring the hell out of many traditionally minded organizations, and their messaging is suffering as a result. They’re afraid to say anything significant online. You can almost hear the company leaders deciding: “Well, if we reveal who we really are, we’re making ourselves too vulnerable to that devastating negative word-of-mouth. We might as well just keep quiet.”

Bad play, because here’s the news – people are going to find out whether you want them to or not. They’re experiencing your products and services – and those of your competitors – and they’re talking about it in blogs, forums, newsgroups and the like. Play your cards too close to the vest, and you’re just making it difficult for your audience to get the info it now thinks it’s entitled to.

It’s “not damned if you do/damned if you don’t.” More like “maybe damned if you do/definitely damned if you don’t.”

So, figure out what messages you want to push, back them up with credible performance, and your intended audience is bound to appreciate and echo it. Get clandestine and quiet, however, and you can bet that they’ll still find a way to dig out the truth. What’s more, they’ll resent you for making it so much trouble. Then they’ll really start talking trash – and there’s no martini I can make that will help with that headache.

Don’t watch commercials with me. I ruin the experience. I complain when the message is off-target or heavy-handed. I will change the channel when a Mazda “Zoom-Zoom” commercial airs because I loath that tagline-whispering child. Why is he even there? I doubt the car’s top feature is that children talk in whispers when it drives by.

Recently, however, that purveyor of gourmet burritos and tacos, Chipotle, has won my cynical heart. No, not with their food (never ate there) but with their radio jingles. I was so entertained by a 30-second song called “Life is Burritoful” that I sought it out on Internet. That search led me to discover Chipotle Radio.

At Chipotle Radio, I can rock out to “Burrito Bol,” bop along to “Call Me Avocado,” and chill out to the reggae stylings of “Know Thy Lunch.” The irreverence and humor in these spots is right on target—perfectly in tune with the lighthearted (yet hearty?) vibe we associate with Mexican food. It’s not just a meal, it’s a fiesta. Sure.

These spots are so catchy that the next time I pass a Chipotle I just might stop in. I’m sure that’s not the absolute ideal result Chipotle desires, but at least I’m not changing the station.

Ah, the free sample—staple of bakeries and food courts everywhere. “Hey buddy, check out this ginger chicken on a toothpick!”

That’s confidence, right? This stuff is so good you just taste it and you’ll want to buy it.

You know what I love about the food court sample? It’s always there. Sometimes on a busy day I just walk back and forth grabbing toothpick after toothpick. Score!

Think they notice it’s me over and over? Think they care? Listen, the chicken is cooked anyway, someone’s got to eat it.

When the day comes that I’m hungry enough, I’ll buy a meal. In the meantime I tell hungry friends to go eat there—ooh, did someone say viral marketing?

And now is when I compare ginger chicken to Web applications.

I just finished an online whiteboard collaboration with my team that works 80 miles away from me, and it was fantastic. “Oh, WebEx,” you say. “Maybe MS LiveMeeting or Adobe Connect.” Nope. Check out vYew, a FREE online collaboration and conferencing tool. It rocks.

Their model is much like the ginger-chicken-on-a-toothpick model (as taught at Wharton). After a simple registration, I get a taste of the chicken, not the whole bird. But I can return again and again whenever I need it. No trial expiration, no watermarked examples.

Much like the generous folks at 37 Signals, which offers up free online tools like Campfire (group chat) and Basecamp (project management), vYew is giving away their product to folks who need just a little bit. Currently, I may only need to use this online collaboration tool a few times a year, but now that the sample hooked me, it means two things:

1. If I need more (more pages, file uploads, etc.) I will become a paying customer to them as opposed to one of the other players
2. I’m telling other people (you) about them

Great product. Great model.

Perry Marshall starts off his article, “Old-Fashioned Discernment in the Age of the Internet,” with the following:

You know what’s wrong with the Internet? Smart people and stupid people get equal airtime. And since stupid people tend to shout longer and louder than people who have acquired wisdom and judgment, ignorance generally prevails.

He goes on to say that stupidity is cheap and plentiful:

. . . with stupidity, your options appear to be endlessly open, whereas wisdom is scarce and expensive and usually involves up-front commitments.

More surprisingly, he claims that you—and your customers—decide between the two every day. This seems to be contradicted by his later claim that “in the 21st century the #1 success skill—a skill that NOBODY ever seems to talk about—is discernment” (defined as keenness of insight and judgment).

I’m perhaps wrong to conflate “wisdom” and “discernment” here; perhaps he sees them as different. But assuming they are the same or at least related, do you decide to be wise/discerning, or is it a skill you learn? Maybe you must decide to learn discernment.

Regardless, I think he’s got a point about the importance of the skill. In a world where we have exponentially more information competing for our attention than a generation ago, discerning what is important enough to pay attention to will be ever more important. Advertisers become more adept at manipulating us, so if we don’t want to lose our shirts, we’d better become more discerning.

However, Marshall’s bread and butter is Internet marketing and publicity. He lists some observations of wise men vs. fools, including this one:

Wise people research online and offline. Wise people take a trip to the library and search collections of used books. Fools suppose that if it can’t be found on the first page of search engine results, it surely must not exist.

Sound observation, but if stupidity really is cheap and plentiful, we marketers are going to have to keep working on making that first page.

As far as social news sites go, Reddit remains my favorite. Easy to clock, painless registration, and a fairly easygoing overall vibe. (Those Digg denizens can be a bit unforgiving.)

Someone over at Reddit is also not afraid to skewer the consult-speak being spun up in the midst of Web 2.0’s attempt to define itself. They crafted a faux punch list that sounds perilously like a lot of the advice coming from “industry experts.”

The insights are either ludicrous extrapolations of solid basic ideas (e.g., use larger, readable font), worthless pseudo-tech advice (tag maelstrom—brilliant!), or a hasty push for monetization. Sure, it’s a gag, but if you hear a group of self-proclaimed Web 2.0 pros talking as follows, give ‘em the bum’s rush:

Interesting site, but the team has some thoughts on how to better leverage your core competencies. Luckily, your site fits nicely into the new paradigm, but there some things that will need to be changed before we can take the plunge:

1. Focus groups revealed that the logo with reflection is much more appealing than just the logo.

2. Adding a greek character (alpha, beta, etc.) is a great way to signal to the market “hey, we’re not quite done right now, so don’t judge us.” We thought using “gamma” would really set you apart as a website that’s on the bleeding edge.

3. Tag clouds are ubiquitous in Web 2.0, but why can’t we push the envelope? That’s where the tag maelstrom comes in. This would ideally be animated in Flash.

4. Bigger font sizes, bigger icons—bigger is better. Everyone can claim that they’re making a site easy enough for your grandmother to use, but how many have got one easy enough for her to read?

5. Gradients. Solid colors not only scream Web 1.0, they also don’t correlate with user happiness, but gradients do.

6. Ad space. You guys seem to have a total disregard for revenue, let alone actual profit. There’s prime real estate on the top of your page being wasted on headlines that could be used for Google ads. They don’t even have to be relevant, just as long as they are big enough to accidentally get clicked on.

Where’s Jim Lehrer when you need him? Well, maybe you don’t need him when the public now has a way to easily get their inquiries to candidates. Last night’s alliance between CNN and YouTube gave people the unprecedented ability to put their questions directly to the field of Democratic presidential contenders; Republicans are on deck for September 17.

Some were understandably unpolished, but it was a refreshing departure from having a monotone moderator reciting a carefully parsed quiz like a Gregorian cantor.

CNN took care (unbiased, we hope) to thin the field from hundreds of contributions to the broadcast-worthy few.

How did they miss this guy?

QA gone wrong, horribly wrong . . .

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Everyone’s a winner after a direct-mail marketing company hired by a local car dealership mistakenly sent out 50,000 scratch-off tickets to residents - all of them declaring the ticket-holder the $1,000 grand prize winner. Just one of the tickets was supposed to be the grand prize winner.

Jeff Kohn, Roswell Honda general manager said a typographical error by Atlanta-based Force Events Direct Marketing, which printed the advertisment, had given all 50,000 scratch-off tickets grand prizes.

SPOILER WARNING: None of the links below reveal the plot of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, however, if you go on a clicking frenzy, you might stumble on some shocking revelations.

As an ardent Harry Potter fan, I am looking forward with bated breath to July 21st. I cannot wait to hold a copy of book seven, and am prepared to drink my first cup of kopi luwak so I can stay awake and finish it.

Unfortunately, there are some out there who don’t share my appreciation of anticipation — and they’re using Web 2.0 technologies to try and spoil the fun for the rest of us. Indulging in some truly dark mischief, someone has taken pictures of the book and has published them on photobucket and on the BitTorrent (peer-to-peer file sharing) site the pirate bay.

Salon’s Machinist tech blog spells it out.

Of course, Scholastic has already moved ahead to take legal action, but dare I say that the mischief has been managed already? JK Rowling herself appears unphased:

“Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity,” she said. “However, spoilers won’t stop people buying the book, they never have — all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book.”

The good news is that these spoil sports are learning that their efforts can backfire in a big way. Digg users are already on the case — testament to the power of social networks!

I was completely reeled in by this video, forgetting that hotel lobby security cams usually don’t have such excellent resolution; nor are hotel lobbies equipped with such excellent acoustics.

All that aside, the video does what a viral video is supposed to do . . . entertain the hell out of me. Of course I followed the link at the end, and while I’m not a big fan of interactive image-based navigation (I spend too much time clicking on flower arrangements and ashtrays hoping they do something) I hung in long enough to pick up the push about the Cisco Mobile Unified Communicator.

Hunting to get that pitch seemed more than a bit antithetical to the campaign’s overarching message. But they eventually get their point across — and that is still one funny clip.

I can’t decide if I should be saving my lawn-mowing money to buy a big-screen TV or a small-screen mobile device. Which takes priority: vegging out at home in front of oversized sports, or accessing videos anytime, anywhere?

While the big-screen is supposed to be every man’s ideal, there are increasingly compelling arguments for, as Steve Martin said in the 70s, “getting small.”

The e-newsletter Mobilized landed in my in-box today, profiling some very cool things that are happening with mobile video.

Story one: new handsets have better-than-ever image quality. Good to know. If I hold out a bit I’ll be better off, eh?

Story three: Discovery is producing a product just for mobile devices. Interesting. There’s actually content I couldn’t get in my living room no matter how big the screen is.

Story five: “Laughter is the best Medicine on www.lime.com“. The lead:

What makes mobile movies successful? Personally, I think that, in short bursts, comedy works a hell of a lot better than drama. With drama, you have to BUILD tension. That takes time. And horror on a small screen fares even worse. How scared can you be of a psycho with a knife the size of a clipped fingernail? A PINKY fingernail!

Makes sense, but I wouldn’t limit that logic to mobile or movies. I’d like to see more companies dare to add a little humor to their web presence. Web marketers are all about the immediate impact of landing pages, and what happens during the first few seconds a visitor is staring at a particular website — capitalizing on the short burst of their attention span, if you will. Marketing pros are always wondering, “What content or imagery can I use to quickly hook that visitor?”

If humor offers a fast hook, why not try that? Certainly the big hits on YouTube are humorous, right? If your company can generate something humorous (and sure, useful to your marketing efforts) you might hook many a visitor, and even end up a viral marketing sensation.

But are you funny?