Summary

REINVENTING YOUR COMPANY IN A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN MARKETPLACE

FOREWORD BY DON TAPSCOTT, Bestselling author of Wikinomics

"A must-read for business leaders, managers, and just about anyone who wants to recognize and tap into the incredible creative energy of customers and stakeholders." -- Richard Florida, bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class

"Marketers should follow the course laid out by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, which leads us into a new brand future of pull, not push, and of conversation, not control." -- B. Josep h Pine II, bestselling author, The Experience Economy

"Thoughtful, innovative, and most of all practical. If your organization wants to deploy technology to build better client relationships, Wikibrands will show you how." -- Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author, Never Eat Alone

"Your brand can share control to create value. With the changing role of consumers, every brand is a lie, not a promise. But Wikibrands offers marketers a rich understanding of how social media can drive engagement for brands that make them true." -- Ross Mayfield , Chairman, President, and co-founder, Socialtext

"A must-read for the hungry marketer!" -- Julie Roehm, Backslash Meta, LLC

"The path forward presented in Wikibrands is brightly illuminated, helping change the landscape in an area ready for consumer-driven, open innovation." -- David Smith, Global Managing Director, Accenture, and Co-Author of Workforce of One : Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization

""A behind-the-curtain look at how you should be engaging your customer directly in the branding process. Ignore this important book at your own peril." -- Saul Kaplan, Founder and Chief Catalyst, Business Innovation Factory

It''s the next generation of business building thattaps into the true power of social networks, brandconnections, and customer participation to build real value. It''s a status update on Facebook, a rave on Twitter, a review on YouTube, and so much more. It''s the herald of a new golden age in customer freedom and individualized customer service.

It''s the future of business--and this book is your wake-up call, strategy guide, and road map to what''s ahead.

In Wikibrands , acclaimed media marketing experts Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover show you how to take advantage of the exciting new models of business and technologies--and enthusiastic online communities--one click at a time.

Built on continuing research from Don Tapscott''s trailblazing $10 million research project, which formedthe basis of bestselling books such as Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital , this book delivers hundreds of the best examples from today''s most successful businesses. You''ll learn how to:

Whether you work with an established business and are looking to make it relevant to today''s "wikiconsumers" or are launching a start-up from scratch, Wikibrands offers countless creative ideas for defining and reaching out to your target audience.

You''ll find refreshing new ways and a FLIRT model to help you open up an honest dialogue with your customers, attract a ready-made fan base through shared interests, and even work with other businesses toward a mutually rewarding goal. These are the latest tricks of the trade, used by hot brand names such as Mozilla Firefox, lululemon,and Zappos; industry giants Starbucks, Dell, and Harley-Davidson; and other less well-known organizations.

This is how you turn merely buzzworthy brands into full-fledged wikibrands. Sean Moffitt is President of Agent Wildfire Strategy & Communications, a leading social influence, word-of-mouth, and customer engagement firm.An internationally known speaker and Web expert, he has reinvented brands as a client and partner for Molson, Guinness, Procter & Gamble, and numerous Fortune 500 companies and start-ups.Mike Dover is Managing Partner of SocialstructAdvisory Group. As Vice President, ResearchOperations, for New Paradigm (formerly nGeneraInsight), he oversaw the research programs for thebestselling books Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital.He also has provided review support for more thana dozen other books.Continue the reinvention of your business atwiki -brands .com

Publisher's Weekly Review

Moffitt, president of a communications company, and Dover, founding principal partner of New Paradigm, an IT strategy think tank, point to wiki brands-organizations, products, and services that maximize social collaboration to drive business value-as a catalyst for a major shift in brand management. Highlighting such companies as Dell; Threadless, a community-based apparel design company; and MOO, a London-based online stationary company, Moffitt and Dover show how active customer participation can get brands noticed and endorsed through the customer grapevine. They provide an excellent exploration of brand communities, what they are, and how to develop them from conception to the management stage. Of particular value to organizations are key metrics and measurement tools that will help determine if efforts are working. A handy reference guide provides succinct summations of key ideas and important questions to consider before developing wiki communities. While capitalizing on social media and customer involvement is not a new idea, there is much specific advice that companies making new forays into this arena will find useful. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Executives Moffitt and Dover set out to show businesses how to use the power of customer collaboration to drive their brands forward and enhance business value with customers. With the web revolutionizing marketing, changes in brand management should coincide with the big shifts in media, communication, and marketplace conditions. Branding is no longer a simple promise, word, or image; it is now a reaction to the new scarcity in consumer attention, time, and trust, and the winners will adapt early to this new playing field. Consumers want better, faster and cheaper products made exactly the way they like them. The authors recommend engaging the customers, and co-innovating with them, and through active participation, businesses will capture customers' loyalty through the power of relationships. There is a wealth of important information in this broad-based report on the new customer-controlled marketplace; it is an excellent wake-up call, a strategic guide, and an execution road map for business leaders.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2010 Booklist

Choice Review

Social networking experts Moffitt and Dover emphasize that the world of advertising has shifted from a one-sided corporate effort at building brands to "wikibranding"--a customer-driven agenda based on the customer's engagement, experience, and social collaboration with the advertised product. The authors note that, just like the popular Wikipedia site that lets users contribute content, consumers now have the ability to get involved with and help shape the brands they buy. To make the most of this new relationship, they advise that advertisers need to know what consumers want and how to channel their energy. This means moving from a control orientation to a collaborative one, using social networking sites, Twitter, blogs, wikis, search engines, user groups, and more. The book provides numerous examples of companies (e.g., Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, Zappos, Museum of Modern Art) actively wikibranding, as well as practical strategies for building a wikibrand. See related, The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko and David K. Brake (CH, Sep'09, 47-0374) and The Hyper-social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media by Francois Gossieaux and Edward K. Moran (CH, Dec'10, 48-2176). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division and graduate marketing students, faculty, and practitioners. P. G. Kishel Cypress College