* Jennifer Leggio is on vacation
Guest editorial by Justin Cooper
The next area for developing understanding is how companies can appropriately engage with their customers in a way that is mutually beneficial to consumers and the brands alike.
Marketing executives need to do away with the "top down" mentality in reaching their customers. Traditionally, marketers create their messages, test them with some people in their deemed "appropriate" demographic (often other marketers and analysts, not customers), fine tune them, and then push the message out to the masses. With the Internet, we now have the ability to hear directly from consumers what they want, and need to embrace this way of communicating. Whether we like it or not, social media and technology in general are changing the way that marketing and advertising executives have to approach their customers, and if they don't change their approach, they should be prepared for a public flogging. Dell is one example of a company that has learned from harsh criticism that the social Web has enabled, and is now recognized as one of the more innovative companies that utilizes social media to collaborate with its customers.
While we have taken great strides since the inception of social media, I see a big hurdle that people are only just beginning to get over: the "build it and they will come" model (i.e. create a "social media campaign" that typically has a beginning and an end, or set up branded social networks or Facebook fan pages and wait and see what customers will say). This model of building a campaign and simply listening to your customers is flawed for few reasons:
This is an exciting time to be a marketer because social media allows us to finally have two way conversations with our customers. The market researchers have historically only listened to customers in focus groups whereas marketers are blamed for only talking at them. Brands need to embrace this concept or inevitably get left behind.
Justin Cooper is the co-founder and head of marketing + innovation for Passenger. An expert in customer experience design, brand strategy and customer collaboration, Justin's work bridges the traditional rift between brand objectives and consumer expectations through a creative, but business-pragmatic approach to innovation. You can stay up to date on his work via the Passenger blog.