Tremor's base of consumers skews largely female, and Knox says they present a unique opportunity. "Women talk to their next-door neighbor, to people in their office, in a horizontal way," he says. "But what is surprising is how vertical those conversations are -- these women talk to their parents and to their kids. They talk in 360 degrees."

How they talk on Tremor's message boards has provided keen brand insights. "One of the fascinating things you get is the language of consumers," Knox says. "If you're in the business of a woman's brand, for instance, it's important to know the language consumers use about you -- and it's not always the language we use or our agencies use."

Exactly, says consultant Jeff Jarvis, who blogs about marketing at BuzzMachine.com. He likes to quote the first three theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto: "Markets are conversations. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice."

Over three years ago, in a now-infamous attack on Dell, Jarvis took the company to task on his site over its customer-service and product deficiencies. As more and more customers jumped on Jarvis's bandwagon, Dell responded a year ago with its own blog, IdeaStorm, where customers can post reviews and offer input. Within 24 hours of launching the site, it had more than 250 members, and some 175 ideas were offered to the company. Even Jarvis was surprised at how Dell embraced those Cluetrain imperatives.

Unhappy customers like Jarvis show "evidence of extreme anger, and it's the blowing point where the consumer leverages all tools, all capabilities, all weapons, all sticks and stones to make their point. And that's where brands find themselves very much at risk," says BuzzMetrics's Blackshaw. "The fact that these are atypical consumers is moot, because these consumers are now painting the brand billboard that everyone sees. Brands right now focus on satisfaction, the traditional scorecard of customer loyalty, but I don't think loyalty is enough anymore. It's almost a question of 'Are you connecting with consumers in such a way that you drive advocacy? Are people willing to advocate for or against you, and what does it mean for your brand franchise?' Loyalty metrics alone are not sufficient in the age of virality."

Blackshaw further explains why he believes customer services is now the media department:

"If we boil this down to simple advertising principles, you want to maximize favorable impressions for the brand. You can do that in a couple of different ways. You can buy impressions, which is the traditional media model -- you buy audience, you buy impressions. You put together well-qualified commercials that, at least in theory, make consumers feel good. Or you recognize that good business processes, good customer services, begets good media impressions.

"I know from monitoring conversations for the past eight years or so that there's an unmistakable connection between good customer service and consumer-generated media. That's why I call it CGM rather than consumer-generated content -- I really wanted to underscore that it acts like media. Customer service is one of the No. 1 drivers of consumer-generated media. Therefore, the media planner of the future needs to think much more strategically and tactically about how investment against customer service actually begets favorable or non-favorable impressions."

Dell's experience in turning bad PR into good word of mouth by becoming more transparent, Jarvis says, should be a wake-up call to agencies about how quickly their world is changing.