Summary

Learn how today's hottest, most successful businesses are tapping into social media and other customer-driven tools and technologies to build, expand, or revive their brands

Launched from branding guru Don Tapscott's landmark $10 million research project on the intersection of technology and business models, WikiBrands explain what your business needs to do NOW to embrace the power of p-2-p technologies like word-of-mouth, user generated content, social media, microblogging, crowdsourcing, and customer rating systems to engage customers and enlist them in brand building and value-enhancement.

Featuring fascinating case studies of how Microsoft, P&G, Nike, Starbucks, Ford, Best Buy, Zappos, and others, launched, built, expanded, or rebuilt their brands through Wiki-style collaboration with customers, this book is part wake-up call, part action plan-and the total blueprint for how you can drive innovation and growth through technology-based immersive customer interaction.

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