As I read Groundswell I was most impressed with many of the corporate examples of how companies have reached out to their customers. Most notably it appears that the customers of high tech products tend to be natural “Joiners” and are thankful for the opportunity to have a 2 way communication with companies. As long as these companies listen to the advise of Li/Bernoff and they are able to sustain the conversation for the long-term they will continue to gain invaluable. What struck as missing from the book was how to evolve or more importantly devolve the social networks or blogs used by companies if they decide to change the way in which they communicate with customers. There were a few examples of lack of executive support and timliness which resulted in failed attempts to capture the Groundswell, but I think it’s important to talk about how to evolve or phase out social network models in a successful way.

If we look at the example of Lego Ambassadors, this is a good example of tapping into a very active, long-term purchaser of Legos but this is also a small sub-set of the community. There may be a more effective way to work with this community that could be more cost effective but it would be difficult to dramatically change this program without angering the very active members. If we take the advice of Li/Bernoff what Lego would do is tap into the network itself to find the next generation of social network that would be even more effective with this community but my concern is that often communities may lack the ability to truly innovate and many of the most creative current day online solutions came from agencies and industry experts How do you marry the two effectively? I think the Unilever example is a perfect demonstration of this. I am not sure that a community of Dove users would have identified the Real Beauty opportunity – or been able to put together this complex off-line and on-line program. Perhaps the answer is to have vision and a plan that aligns with the company objectives but to use the Groundswell (customers) to assist in the definition of tactics to execute the strategy?

Maybe I have it wrong and by wearing my corporate hat I am giving too much credit to the agencies and corporate marketing groups but we’ve seen some amazing products from these groups and I don’t think we should lose sight of the potential these groups bring to the table. The groundswell is important so finding the balance between these efforts will be critical.

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