As a follow-up to my Consumer Generated Content post earleir this week, and to drive the point home, here's an excerpt from Lefsetz Letter about the movie Borat (and why it's such a big hit based on a word of mouth/viral marketing strategy):
If you want success today, create something good. Seed the early adopters. And then cease, or at least slow down, your marketing. Because the more you beat people over the head, the less attention they’re going to pay. THEY want to feel in control, THEY don’t want to feel tools of the system. THEY want to embrace the project...
Stop the spin cylce...fewer and fewer people are buying it.
[Thanks to Joseph Jaffe for the pointer]