BrainStorm

The world of marketing is changing and it’s changing fast! And no it’s not because the big bloated advertising agencies are so swift : ),.. it’s because YOU (TIMES Person of the Year,.. in case you didn’t know),.. are.

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have a great new book out called> Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message. Ben & Jackie do a great job of covering this “New” phenomenon that is taking over traditional media and has Madison Ave shaking in it’s boots.

So first off what is a citizen marketer? >

“Citizen marketers are customer evangelists who generate media on behalf of products, services, companies or people who generate inspiration. Most forms of media they create is shared across the web.”

Do you fit the profile? Do you have a blog, camera phone, myspace, flickr,.. have you ever “YouTubed” anything? If you have any of the above, you already have all the tools necessary to become a Citizen Marketer. And if you don’t getting them is easy!

“A solitary citizen today with a broadband connection and a few cheap tools has a substantially better chance of influencing the public’s perceptions of billion-dollar corporations than ever before. With a voice, a vote and a vocation, tens of millions of Americans are involving themselves in the cultural lives of business. The “social media” of blogs, podcasts and social networks are fusing pop culture with traditional marketing, and it’s causing all manner of disruption.”

“Traditional media structures are undergoing vast molecular changes that decentralize their power, diminish their reach and usurp their authority. This bubbling stew of change is creating the DNA for a new forum of marketing unlike any other. It may make brand managers accustomed to top-down message control blanch, but it’s too late. The construct is set. Message control is obsolete. Marketing control is futile.

The citizen marketers are here.

Citizen marketers should be loved and embraced. Afer all they’re your customers. So go ahead and let them show the world how much they love you. And if they don’t love you?,.. well that’s an entirely different problem : )

Excerpts taken from Citizen Marketers.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 3:42 pm and is filed under All About Us, New Media, WOM Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Peer-to-peer, Books, Citizen Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.