The Media Supermarket

This is a very interesting report, made by Fastsearch for the Economist Intelligence Unit titled, “Web 2.0 Goes Corporate” and it’s the result of a survey they did with 406 executives, most in the C-suite level. It’s great and very interesting to know that the large (and typically slow) corporations are picking with such a crazy way of doing business!
Opening up everything (almost) to their consumers, and encouraging them to share their knowledge and thoughts, participate in the product creation process, to become “prosumers”.
Although this is not new, the degree to which these executives are embracing Web 2.0 is interesting. P&G is one of the sited smart companies, who are capitalizing the power of social networking to engage users in their products. Capessa, is a joint venture with Yahoo! and aims at tapping into the collective knowledge of women, their preferences, and what they think about in the various stages of their life. This is indirect market research, where they can collect the data they want, and can also have the engaged members of that community fill out some questionnaires for them. It’s strange they have an ad for Colgate on the home home page! Or maybe they are embracing the truly open nature of this new phenomenon and allowing almost anything, on the condition that it nurtures the community they are building. They also have Miss Irresistible on Myspace. This is a fictitious character that indulges in being stylish, and boasts a great smile, she also encourages others to show their smile (Crest) . Interesting.
Markets are more and more becoming “conversations”, and the markets are becoming more and more liquid.
The report was made by asking the top people in the top industries, most of them really know what they are talking about. This really contrasts to Seth Godin’s post on “pundits”. Makes you think again…