Has viral marketing died before it even reached puberty? We don’t know, but Duncan Watts seems to think maybe so. A recent article discusses Duncan’s theory that has driven his research during a stint at Yahoo!.

Viral marketing is predicated on the existence of “Influentials” - people that are highly networked individuals that convince others to join a trend. Dr. Watts performed research that disputes the notion that trends are started by influentials - in fact his research shows that most trends are started by average folks.

We hope this is true because it implies that people really hold the power. That maybe people really do push the best things forward, not just the crap that they see other people use. And wouldn’t that be great? People actually advocating for products or services that they really enjoy.

I can only hope.

Does this hold any significance for wine marketing? I don’t know if our industry has really gotten in to a “trend setter” frame of mind. Maybe it has. Certainly when I go to a trendy wine bar, I always feel a bit unclean when I leave.

What do you think? Has wine marketing been using viral marketing techniques to catch try to use the ‘influentials’ to market particular wines? Has it worked? Has it worked to market wine over other choices, like cocktails or beer?