The creative destruction that social media is currently unleashing will change more than technology or the leader board of the Fortune 100. It is driving a qualitative shift in the nature of relationships between brands and their customers.
The question remains: which brands will commit to creating a private sector pillar of social change and which will become casualties of their own outdated thinking?
The new dynamics between brands and consumers driven by social media are proving to be a powerful impetus for change.
I definitely love that all these car brands are coming out with hybrid forms of every car that they have. It's very awesome because I think it does make a difference and it doesn't hurt that you save a lot of money on gas.
Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very very good. Spending $1 000 for a ham sandwich would feel very very bad. Spending $19 000 for a small family car would feel well more or less right. But as with physical pain fiscal pain can depend on the individual and everyone has a different threshold.
I recorded a song called I Fall to Pieces and I was in a car wreck. Now I'm worried because I have a brand-new record and it's called Crazy!
When I started Netscape I was brand new out of college and all the aspects of building a business like balance sheets and hiring people were new to me.
In the social business marketplace brands that hope to build loyal and growing communities do so most effectively when they demonstrate their core values and allow a community to build and engage around it.
The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause.
Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal.