CAROL PHILLIPS: I'm very interested in some of the
crowdsourcing applications that are going on, where we're
involving consumers and answering questions that the
companies are posing so that they can have that two-way
conversation.
I think in terms of marketing itself, some of the
experimentation that's being done to understand the real
value of a social media conversation, one of the
things that concerns me is that social media is in some
ways becoming disconnected from marketing.
It's social media marketing, not just media.
It has to come back to creating brand value
ultimately, because someone is going to have to pay for it.
And in the end, it's about building
relationships with customers.
So I would like to see more in that area.
I think there's some exciting work that
needs to be done there.
Crowdsourcing is our applications where consumers
are invited to provide ideas to help companies make
products better, to make communications better.
We're experimenting a little bit with it just with
communities of Gen Y marketers, because I'm close
to students and I have the opportunity to interact with
them every day.
We're starting to put them together in communities to
allow marketers to talk to them directly.
Not as much for research, but for actually improving things
so that the consumer can interact.
Mountain Dew has been doing some interesting work with
that, VitaminWater, inviting consumers to actually
participate in the marketing process.
Well, Mountain Dew knows who their customers are, and
they're always introducing new products.
And rather than go through the traditional market research
process of brainstorming ideas, vetting them with
customers, they went to customers and said we want to
create a new flavor.
And so people nominated the flavors that they wanted.
They were voted on.
They came up with one.
Then they started the process all over again with naming it,
and ultimately, with the marketing process.
So it was truly user-generated marketing.
