Mark Slaga, chief information officer of Dimension Data , a large computer services firm based in suburban Johannesburg, says he has received 25 e-mails recently from employees who want permission to use Macs at work. So far he has refused, because he doesn’t want to hire people to provide Mac tech support, but “it’ll happen someday,” he concedes. “Steve Jobs doesn’t need a sales force because he already has one: employees like the ones in my company.”

It’s a neat example of word of mouth advocacy in action. It is driven by the consumer, not the salesman and in this case the company (Apple) does not even explicitly support it, preferring to cater for the needs of the consumer and the education market and to concentrate on making the product desirable.