Andy Sernovitz – Author Biography
Early Life
Andy Sernovitz grew up in the United States and came to marketing through entrepreneurship rather than advertising agencies. He founded his first businesses as a young man and became fascinated by a simple observation: the most powerful marketing isn’t advertising at all — it’s what customers tell each other.
Career
Sernovitz founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), the industry trade group for word-of-mouth marketing, and became the field’s leading evangelist. His book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (2006) distilled the discipline into practical advice: be interesting, make it easy to share, earn trust, and respect. He later founded SocialMedia.org, a community for social media leaders at major brands, and has consulted for hundreds of companies. His work helped legitimize word-of-mouth — once dismissed as unmeasurable — as a serious marketing discipline.
Major Works
Sernovitz’s landmark book is Word of Mouth Marketing (2006; revised editions followed). His blog and newsletter, Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!, collected years of practical marketing wisdom.
Writing Style and Themes
Sernovitz writes in a punchy, plainspoken, example-packed style — short chapters, memorable rules, real company stories. His central argument is that remarkable products and honest customer treatment generate conversation no ad budget can buy. His recurring themes are simplicity (the “five T’s”: Talkers, Topics, Tools, Taking Part, Tracking), ethics in marketing, and the idea that word of mouth can’t be faked — only earned. He is allergic to jargon and devoted to common sense.
Legacy
Andy Sernovitz helped create word-of-mouth marketing as a professional discipline, giving it an association, a vocabulary, and a playbook. His frameworks shaped how a generation of marketers thought about social media before social media had a name. Word of Mouth Marketing remains the field’s founding text.
