New (ways of using) Media

GRP Media Session: Consumer Insights

Monday, November 9th, 2009 | New (ways of using) Media | No Comments

Emergence of web 2.0 and interactive medias in general is raising a major issue: what is the place and the power of consumers ?

Today, this “consumer centric” issue is a priority, the power links between consumers and organizations are changing and rebalancing. ”Strategies are increasingly less marked out and more difficult to balance for companies”. Indeed, consumers have more directly and easily access to affirm their opinions with more pressure than before.

The GRP Media Session I attended last Thuesday 27 of October dealed with this significant issue. After an introduction of 10 minutes to put in place the context of the conference, three Media specialists shared great ideas about the topic.

First, Patrick Willemarck, Executive Chairman of The Magnetic Think spoke about “Challenges of innovation” by focusing on how and why to integrate consumer into innovation process and the value chain of an organization.

Then, Stefan Heremans, Account Group Manager by GfK Panel Services, presented results about a study focusing on what distinguish brands from each other surviving the downturn.

Finally, Simon McDermott, Co-founder & CCO by Attentio, dealed with the growth of social media which is changing the communication landscape and providing immense opportunities and threats to companies.

I was particularly interested by the first intervention of Mr Willemarck who pointed out two determinant elements. On one hand, integrating consumers into value chain, into innovation process seems to be a creative way to capture value. On the other hand, new technologies enable to develop platforms and tools which can help companies to capture this value by dialoging with consumers and by doing this, allowing them to be creative and to share it. As Bill Joy, co-foundator of Sun Microsystems, said: “There are always more smart people outside your company than within it”

Tags: consumer, innovation, social media, web 2.0