“Spark” Marketing empowers advocating Passionistas

Making consumers the voice of your advertising is not so much a tactic to be leveraged as it is an overarching strategy.
"Passionistas: The New Empowered Consumers," conducted by Yahoo and sponsored by MediaVest, discusses brand loyalty and advocacy in this engaged group.
The research found that one way for brands to generate discussion is through a spark, or messaging event, usually in the form of viral or consumer-generated media.
What is being seen is that these same empowered passionistas/consumers, will ingest these sparks, create user-generated content, and accelerate is appeal and audience.
Passionistas also seek information, the research found. For every minute typical Internet users spend on content, passionistas spend six minutes online with content related to their interests. The contingent visits particular Web sites related to their interest three times more often than typical users. Once engaged, passionistas become brand advocates, passing along information about products and services with which they share an affinity. Consequently, advocates also moderate situations where consumers criticise the brand of choice and strive to be the experts in their interest areas to friends and family.