IWOMC '07- is this where WoM is at?

Last week I presented at the 3rd International Word of Mouth Conference in Amsterdam. It was a thought-provoking couple of days with a friendly bunch of people. Good on you Nils for organising it.

Having attended last year, my key thought going into this one was:

"is it just me, or is everyone else using WoM as another media tactic, rather than a fundamentally better way of approaching marketing strategy?"

An avalanche of presentations of the various buzzmarketing agencies resoundingly confirmed the the former. I note that George Silverman also experienced this at WOMMA in the States late last year - see his insightful blog post here.

I believe in 'live and let live' for the buzz guys, but my concern is that "WoM" as a concept is getting niched as a kooky direct marketing tactic, rather than fundamental strategic shift. My presentation (download from here) followed this line of thought and showed how you can build a WoM centred communications strategy.

The good news from IWOMC '07 was that there seemed to be an acceptance that we need to move things 'upstream'.

So the questions I'm left with are:

1. Why isn't WoM being talked about in this way?
2. Who else out there (apart from George) is trying to do this?
3. How can we get this discussion going at events like WOMMA and IWOMC?