Global competitive advantage spread by WOM

I often wonder just how powerful word of mouth marketing is. Recently, I read another “work” book, Word of Mouth Marketing, (how appropriate), by Andy Sernovitz., and it proved to be very interesting. What it also did was make me even more curious.

Recently, many of my global venture capital prospects across the US, Europe and Australia have all said that the last few weeks have been the best weeks of the year. For one prospect, Q4 will be higher in revenue and profit than Q1, 2 and 3 combined!

One CEO form Ireland said that people want the economy to get better, think that it is getting better and therefore it is doing better. And I thought that made a whole lot of sense. It ties back to the media phenomenon. If the media says there is a crisis, people believe there is a crisis, stop spending, withdraw funds, etc. which actually leads to a crisis. The point I and the CEO are trying to make is that some positive buzz is circling the globe making people believe that the worst is over and that the economy is starting to drastically increase, and it is. The question is, how much of this has to do with WOM marketing?