Church of the Customer blogs about the Whole Foods marketing philosophy. In the post Jackie Huba discusses some marketing budget numbers and compares Whole Foods to Safeway. It's the last comment that really tells the story though:

If we were to simply compare the two supermarket giants:

* Safeway: Spend money on ads telling customers we're great

* Whole Foods: Spend money on being great

Well said. When I speak to marketing and PR groups one of my initial slides is a quote from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. Jeff was interviewed by Wired about the changes in Amazon's advertising campaigns.

Is this a trend?

Yes, more and more money will go into making a great customer experience, and less will go into shouting about the service. Word of mouth is becoming more powerful. If you offer a great service, people find out.

In the magazine world, we rely on ads. Should we be terrified?

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.

Think about how many times you go out of your way to tell a friend about a good experience you had with a company? Or a bad one?