Marketing and communication professionals constantly look for most effective measures to reach out to their target audiences. Currently, they increasingly turn to Word of Mouth (WoM) marketing.
 
It is evident that we trust those people who are closest to us: family, friends and colleagues. We respect, rely on and hear their opinion.
 
In the modern world consumers are very sceptical towards marketing messages and quite often ignore or simply do not notice them. Information clutter has done its job: it is increasingly difficult to stay distinctive, noticeable and gain consumers' interest. Even marketing and PR stunts no longer help as much.
 
Therefore, in such a context when consumer trust and attention is in high deficit, WoM marketing may be a solution. Its biggest advantage is that information moves among people who know each other. People pass information over to people they know more or less well. The level of trust in, and the impact of, such information will most likely be at its highest. The speed at which messages move among people may be a single drawback of WoM. However, this issue may be easily solved by IT.

A slowdown/crisis - any radical changes - make us rethink our lives and activities. They force us return to the basics. The current market situation may therefore be a good opportunity for marketing and communication people to remember or re-learn "forgotten" things, e.g. WoM marketing.