.tomorrow (part 3)
"Tomorrow World" is roughly equivalent to "Bizzarro World" from Superman, or more recently from Seinfeld. Imagine that your consumer plays the part of the merchandiser and product expert! Often I hear, "but that has always happened - customer referrals have always been key to my business."
While that behavior is certainly ingrained into society, never before have there been the tools to represent "package" products or the conduits to quickly reach a multitude of people friends, acquaintances, or the mass public. The cost of "publishing" information has little or no fixed cost online and the associated variable cost or additional cost to reach an extra person is nil!
Thank Blogs (like this one). Thank LinkedIn. Thank Facebook. Thank YouTube, eBay, and the Internet at large. Each of the touch points to other consumers is a chance to "initiate commerce."
eBay is my favorite example as it is often not spoken about. Browse it, and research products and you will see that eBay is merely a collection of product pages. Product information created by consumers. Just as an example for our friends at Harman Kardon, there are more results from mistyping "Harmon." Sorry Sidney. Any Brand Manager making that mistake would have a very short career!
But consumers thrive! Imagine more complex messaging and the representation of brand essense. Brands should think about how they can influence but not control this ensuing chaos and treat and empower the customer as a distribution channel.
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