The marketing lead for a Pepsi promotion who drinks Coke is making a consumer choice. She’ll tell you to drink Pepsi until she’s blue in the face…but get her home and she drinks Coke. That disconnect has caused problems in the past but a part of the solution may lie in social media. Utilizing brand advocates to access specific markets in powerful ways might just be the path to take. I’d hate to think that we’ll continue to bludgeon unhappy consumers with marketing concepts they just aren’t interested in.

Obviously there is market research before a big marketing push, yet a lot of companies ignore this and still go down the “You’ll like it because we say you will” route. I think this is the mindset that needs to change, and we’ll see less of us more power comes back to the consumer again.

Thanks for stopping by, Damien, nice to see you around these here parts.

The natural social nature of a human being wants to share their info with people they know or other people who may care. Ultimately you become a marketer because you are a consumer. Conversely, marketers are originally consumers because they consume their own brand they market. Anecdotally, I think of instances of people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with designer logos that are well-known. This is the ultimate consumption-marketing vehicle. This type of usage becomes a feedback loop where a person becomes a consumarketer.

We’re all consumarketers. Some of us just don’t know it, while others are taking complete advantage of that fact for better or worse.

I think the two go hand in hand. Marketers have a better understanding of how to reach consumers because they’re consumers themselves. Consumers understand what kind of marketing works for them because they market their likes and dislikes to their friends.