Dr. Carl's Response

Promoted from the comments, Dr. Carl responded to my thoughts on the reasons behind the resurgence in WOM:

I agree with you about the increasing importance that organizations place on relationships though I fear that some companies wish they could "get away" with awareness and have only come to the idea of relationships begrudgingly (and thus I think some of their efforts will be seen as shallow).

In my talk I also discussed the issue of WOM as a media channel and argued that if the industry (or a portion of it, anyway) makes this shift in how we talk about WOM, then the effectiveness of the channel will still rely on relationship principles that serve as the foundation of effective and ethical WOM.