Case in point: the iPhone commercials, which were extremely minimalist and made out to promote the iPhone as this ultrasmooth, ultraenjoyable product. That commercial line made the iPhone as popular as it has become. But it wouldn't have worked that way if the iPhone hadn't had such perfect design. Imagine a commercial for the Voyager attempting the same types of ads. It plain wouldn't work. Not because the Voyager is a poor phone per se, but because it's so deeply flawed in its design.
If a product or service is so great and amazing, it seems to me that simply describing it, without the usual bullshit hype and borderline (or outright) lies that usually accompany the description, should be enough for people to try it, love it, then tell everyone they know how great it is.
As an example of what I'd call "real marketing", for my upcoming niche fansite about some MMORPG, I want to give maximum information to potential users about what my site does and how, before they even sign up. And I'm working hard to structure the site properly and have usable navigation, and eventually I want tutorials integrated all throughout the site and such. In fact, I'll let users try a limited version of the site just by providing a username and password, no email required. The idea is to make barrier to adoption almost impossibly low.
And I do want to produce marketing material, though I'll let my users distribute it. First, the marketing stuff will be segregated in one section of the site, so that people can go look it up only if they actually want to, I don't want to use the braindead "opt-out" approach that seems so popular where you spread your bullshit hype everywhere and your customers have to ignore it if they happen not to want to hear it (which most of them don't). I'll produce a couple versions of my marketing material, targeted to specific kinds of users. So if for example some alliance member wants to convince his leader to adopt my service for the whole alliance, he'll show him the leader-targetted page. So, make a great product that people WANT to talk about and then make it EASY to do so, provide a lot of "meat" so they have lots to talk about. I'm lucky because my site is so focused on a tight audience that I just need to tell a few people directly about it to bootstrap adoption.