Where can I get that? - Have marketers lost that edge?

I was talking to my eldest yesterday morning about a T-shirt her teacher was wearing. It was a picture of Yoda, but a mug shot. My first question was "where did she buy it?". She told me that she didn't ask her (as she felt it was the wrong thing to ask a teacher lol). But it had me thinking about it. I frequent a Chinese Mall here a lot and most times I am buying either food or other cool gadgets I can find, and when friends visit, they see (or eat) what I bought there and they ask me where I got it, and I would tell them.

So it had me thinking, have marketers lost sight of that one element of marketing? Getting a product out there to generate curiosity to then drive conversions either online or off? I feel that any product can be marketed that way, but when I look at a web page, its all cold hard sell, or testimonials have been altered (or faked). It made me wonder how marketers get the word out there, using their existing clients and not just social bookmarking or article directories, RSS feeds or any other of the generic answers we hear people give when asked about traffic and conversions. How many marketers actually use their clients to bring in new clients?

I have always been a firm believer in business reputations, web reputation and I feel that using a client to help you advertise not only gets you more conversions, but its a boost for your business reputation because people recommend you to others.

(IMHO of course)