People are the message.

People are the message when people say "word of mouth" is the most influential form of media on their decision making. Research firm Big Research polled 15,000 people and asked them to rate the influence of media on their decision making. Word of mouth was number one.

People are the message when the excessive number of advertising messages creates demand for products to block them. In a 2005 survey, Yankelovich Inc. discovered that 69 percent of Americans would pay for products that block out marketing and advertising. They also found that more than half of Americans avoid buying anything from a company that overwhelms them with advertising.

The message Americans are trying to send the message saturators is cool it. Yet the saturators carry on, spurring the growth of an industry focused on shutting the advertisers out.

The work of citizen marketers may be considered on the fringes of culture and personal expression when compared to what the majority of people create on the web, but their work hardly goes unnoticed. As we have seen thus far, some work produced by citizen marketers can find large audiences. But an audience needn't be large to be influential.

When messages are influential, it is because they are authentic. When they are created and delivered beyond the boundaries of corporate marketing mechanisms, messages are more authentic. That's the value and promise of word of mouth; authenticity contributes to authority. A distinct advantage citizen marketers hold over many traditional media is what we call dynamic authority. It is authority fueled by continuous, productive activity.

With citizen-created content, people are the message because their role as publishers or broadcasters hoists them above the boundaries that one-way media communicators have erected around themselves. Citizen marketers and online-content creators with substantial audiences and dynamic authority rely upon and thus interact with their audiences. They work in the public piazzas where other people write, work, and play, too.

They are not the balcony standers of one-way media, concealed behind walls of organizational privacy.

Participation is their medium and their platform.