Wikibrands:
Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace
By: Sean Moffitt, Mike Dover
Published: January 6, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 318 pages
ISBN: 978-0-07-1749275
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
"Wikibrands represent the future of business - a future that calls for a shift in the long-held business management tenets on how we approach customers", write thought leaders Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover in their landmark and visionary book Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace. The authors describe how the entire concepts of marketing and branding have been turned completely upside down in the new, engaged customer driven world.
Sean Moffitt (photo left) and Mike Dover recognize the changes that are transforming brands, as well as the opinion that consumers hold of brands. The previous paradigm of brands as promises, and of controlled images, has long since passed into history. The marketer no longer exerts control over the message and the brand. That power has passed through to the empowered customers of today and tomorrow, who regard themselves as being part owners and critical stakeholders in the brand itself. As a result, the traditional brand itself is evolving into a new, community based concept. One of the tools at the disposal of the modern consumer is that of social media. While the tools may be important as a platform, what really matters is the shared message, customer collaboration, and the building of community.
Mike Dover (photo left) and Sean Moffitt understand the critical importance of engaging customers in meaningful dialogue, that builds relationships and shared collaboration, and stakeholding in the brand and its future.Brands without engagement will fall by the wayside to marketers who understand the shared ownership of brands in the emerging engaged world. The brand can no longer be a marketing shaped image. Instead, the revolutionary change in the idea of a brand, is fast becoming on of relationship. With the old command and control model of one way communication being shattered by the social web, the authors have termed the new model of of the Wikibrand. In this new view of the world, the brand is built upon, added to, shared, changed, and transformed into something entirely customer driven and designed. The letting go of the control is the crucial first step for marketers to achieve engagement and create relationships. The participatory brand is replacing the the one way brand, and future branding and marketing thinking must reflect that new reality.
For me, the power of the book is how Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover present their thought provoking analysis of the evolution of brands from one of working and talking with customers, from the previous technique of broadcasting messages at customers. The authors provide both a theoretical background for their ideas, and share their practical steps for creating a fresh and collaborative approach to marketing and brands. The book contains nine steps, that should be read and absorbed by every business leader and marketer, as a source of understanding into how brands have ceased to exist in their previous form. Indeed, the new Wikibrand is almost formless, as it is altered, amended, and recreated in previously unimagined ways and uses.
The authors also bolster their discussion with case studies of real world companies who have embraced the Wikibrands ideal. These businesses have recognized the fundamental changes that are taking place in the social marketplace. These corporations have reconciled the seemingly opposing worlds of brand development and customer driven conversation and collaboration. For these companies, community has replaced control, and the result has been a strengthening of their business relationships with its customers, and an enhanced bottom line. The authors capture the essence of the new paradigm, and not only describe how it works, but also why Wikibrands are the future of brands and of marketing.
I highly recommend the seminal and important book Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, to any business leaders, marketers, and social media thought leaders who are seeking a fresh approach and perceptive insights into the rapidly evolving nature of brands and marketing. The authors take the reader into the online social world where pull marketing is created through engagement and collaboration, and where the old push ideas are not only ineffective, but irrelevant.
Read the essential and idea packed book Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, and discover the philosophy behind this new collaborative world, and learn the tactics and strategies that will turn your company into a success in the Wikibrand universe.
