Three similar comments at recent talks gave us something to think about on the subject of advertising and its future. Speakers from Mozilla, Anomaly, and Thrillist all have discussed the same notion: that they don’t spend money on advertising.

At the Influx Curated event in San Francisco recently, Paul Kim who runs Mozilla’s marketing, talked about how the tech company turned to the community to help get the word out about their products and organizing ‘download drives’ on certain days.

At the PSFK Conference NYC 09 Carl Johnson of Anomaly talked about the IP projects his agency develop. He told the audience they don’t spend a penny on advertising the companies they create and that they develop the brands by making deals with retailers and other partners that are mutually beneficial.

And at the Good Ideas Salon in New York in June during Internet Week, Ben Lerer of the Thrillist email newsletters described how he and his co-founder were told by his investors that they were not to spend a single penny on marketing and therefore resorted to more guerrilla activities to grow the subscriber database.

It’s interesting to hear stories like this about how emerging companies are still actively engaged in marketing but they’re avoiding advertising cost. Instead they are looking for innovative ways to collaborate with partners and the the community.