Apptera's CMO explains how to capitalize on mobile's WOM power, without relying on the fickle whims of the cool crowd.

The name of the game today in marketing is viral -- how you can spread your message to the broadest audience, in the quickest amount of time, in the most cost-effective way possible. The easy answer way is to try and hit the "trendy" consumers, because we marketers know word of mouth is the most influential form of communication. But not so fast: not all trendy types are created equal.

Procter & Gamble showed us that there are two types of people associated with how trends develop: trendsetters and trend-spreaders. Trendsetters are the people whose equity is based on being different. They discover something early, broadcast it to the world and bask in the glow of being on the bleeding edge of culture. They are the people who, once someone else starts wearing their new favorite kind of sunglasses, decide that sunglasses just aren't cool anymore. And they move on.

Trendsetters can help sales, but the true drivers of sales are the trend-spreaders. These are people who notice what the trends are, see the latest movie or buy the latest gadget, then share it with their friends and their social networks. Back in the '70s, Procter & Gamble discovered these are the consumers that have the most value to P&G brands. Connecting with just 1 percent of trend-spreaders significantly increased sales. This is huge leverage that any marketer should pursue. But the $64,000 question is how do you find trend-spreaders in today's world?

Let's look at the biggest -- and potentially most lucrative -- environment for trend-spreading: mobile media and social networking. Most, if not all, trend-spreaders from age 15 to 34 are hyper-mobile yet totally "wired" to their friends at all times. They're connected and love to share their passions about movies, music and sports with their peers and social networks. And while desktop and laptop computers stay at home or in the dorm room, trend-spreaders carry their cell phones with them at all times.

So how do we connect the three dots: platform, trend-spreaders and marketing? Let's consider game playing, a huge pastime for mobile mavens. A young lady calls a movie showtime application and accepts an invitation to receive a text message with a link to play an "Indiana Jones" trivia game sponsored by a new energy drink. She clicks on the toll-free number and is asked three multiple-choice questions. If she gets all of them correct, she has a chance to win a trip to the Hollywood movie screening of the latest "Indiana Jones" film and a case of the energy drink.

Imagine how easy it is for this person to send that text to other people. "Hey, gang! Check out this trivia game. It's a chance to meet Harrison Ford and go to Hollywood!" Engaging and simple. She becomes the spreader of the trend and an implicit endorser of the energy drink.

Consider another 2008 viral application: voice-blogging. Instead of typing on their social networking sites, trend-spreaders are downloading voice widgets onto their MySpace or Facebook paged. While downloading the widget, most users opt-in to allow advertisers to trigger off their profile data, such as age, location and interests. Once installed, they call a toll-free number and leave an audio blog for their peers and social networks, usually about what movies or music or activities they are into. This is a marketer's dream. Now imagine the energy drink company needing to introduce their product to 17- to 24-year-old males in Chicago.  They simply need to insert a short-audio ad sponsoring the voice blog of users fitting that demographic, and these trend-spreaders and all their peers will hear it. The message gets triggered off the user's profile, and the short ad can then be forwarded virally to even more friends and peers. This is way beyond what Proctor & Gamble ever imagined during the 1970s.

Trend-spreaders are gregarious people, inclined to engage and to share, while trendsetters are lone-wolf personalities who quickly move on when others jump on their bandwagon. As the mobile revolution intensifies, it'll be the "spreader of the trends" that you'll want to associate your brand with.

Randy Haldeman is chief marketing officer of Apptera.