It has been quite a month for Bazaarvoice! We were named Austin’s Best Place to Work, and our CEO Brett Hurt was just named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Austin. In addition to these very prestigious awards, Bazaarvoice awarded our top moderators by inducting them into the Bronze, Silver, or Gold Club. Together, our moderators have read and moderated over 50 million reviews, with our three Gold Club team members moderating over 100 million characters each! To put it in perspective, that’s the equivalent of moderating War and Peace more than 32 times!

This is a world-class achievement — these moderators have read and moderated more reviews than anyone else in the world!

Bazaarvoice has always been proud to tout its unique culture, and this pride has spread to the Moderation Team as well. When Bazaarvoice does a service project, the moderators are quick to lend a hand. For our Teddy Bear drive last Christmas, the moderators brought in more teddies than any other Bazaarvoice team! And just as Bazaarvoice wears green to cheer on our Sales Team at the end of a quarter, so do the moderators.  We meet regularly for happy hours and team events, and some moderators even meet in small groups to visit client stores they are curious about.

As a world-class organization, we hire only the best, and our moderators come from all walks of life. All of them have Bachelor’s degrees, and many have Master’s degrees and beyond. We have lawyers, teachers, flight instructors, and trapeze artists. Their backgrounds are eclectic and unique, but at the core is their passion for what they do. Our moderators take to heart that they are our “Guardians of the Brand.” If you know someone with the passion and dedication to join our team, we’re hiring!

From left: Heather Brunner (SVP Client Services), Pamela Gentry-Bailey, Melissa Mathews, Amy Aldrete, Charlie Marriott (Manager, Content Operations).

]]> http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/06/23/bazaarvoice-moderation-team-%e2%80%9cgold-club%e2%80%9d-reads-more-reviews-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/feed/ 1 http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/06/19/how-one-man-got-a-whole-mob-dancing/ http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/06/19/how-one-man-got-a-whole-mob-dancing/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:02:49 +0000 Sam Decker http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/?p=1226 It only takes one guy to start a party.

In this humorous YouTube video that is quickly reaching viral status, one lone dancing man at the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington starts a massive dance party – and a revolution.

Many are citing the Sasquatch Dancing Man – or “SDM” as some are calling him – as a prime illustration of the ideal online community growth cycle. There are a number of important lessons to take away from this video, so we’ll highlight just a few here.

Building a following takes persistence.

It’s only 18 short seconds before SDM gains a follower, but longer versions of the video show him dancing alone for a minute and a half. For all we know, he was dancing by himself for hours before anyone had the courage to join in.

As a brand, your marketing attempts to build a community can’t be a one-shot event. Too often, ambitious attempts to build online communities are abandoned when the desired results aren’t instantaneous, leaving “ghost town” communities behind.

It takes time to grow a following. Commit to persistently promoting your offering over time to capture the innovators who will give your community life.

Early-adopters are crucial to bridging the gap.

SDM’s first two partners are the most important contributors to the formation of his dance mob. It takes courage to get up and dance, but once they do, it becomes increasingly easier for others to join the fray.

Early-adopters bridge your community to the majority. These contributors have the courage and motivation to join the conversation with innovators, and once they do, there is exponentially less risk for others to join. It’d be impossible to reach the tipping point seen in the video – where not dancing becomes against the norm – without first attracting the brave few who get the ball rolling.

In order to attract these early-adopters to your brand community, make contribution as easy as possible. Offer many ways to contribute with varying levels of involvement to capture enough early-adopters to take your community mainstream.

Participation begets participation.

At a certain point in the video, it becomes against the norm to refrain from dancing. There is no longer any social risk in participating – indeed, such a large mass has joined the party that it’s the people sitting, not SDM and his followers, who are out of place.

This same momentum effect exists in online communities. We’ve had clients tell us they were able to turn off solicitations for stories or reviews because an “accidental community” formed around their product. Read our blog post on the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

Once the barriers to contribution are gone, people want to contribute. Customers who wouldn’t normally participate start to submit feedback. That’s way customers bother to write the 1,001st review for a product, or the sixth answer to a question – they want to contribute to conversations that have helped them, and it’s become the norm to do so.

Read what others are saying about the video here.

Gartner reports that 50% of brand communities will fail. And by "fail," I believe they mean "shut down." That leaves the other 50% still live. But are they successful? How many “ghost town” communities are out there? Over the past couple years many progressive brands have explored social media and community marketing initiatives — Twitter, Facebook, blogs, viral videos, forums or fully-fledged online communities. With the comeback of the term "community" and the hype and buzz of Facebook, many other brands are likely contemplating everything from establishing a Twitter account to launching a Facebook-like community within their site. The promise is high customer engagement — which the CFO could care less about, but marketers often believe drives sales and loyalty.

I applaud exploration, experimentation and “fail fast” initiatives. But now we’re entering into a time where the key phrase is "show me the results." The focus on measurability is leading many brands to take a hard look at what they launched, and step away from things that didn’t work. It's a critical time for these brands, and for any others considering a move into social media. These failures don't mean that online community-building is a waste of time, or that it can't be done. But it's complex, and the appropriate strategy could be markedly different from one brand to the next. Before beginning the virtual barn-raising in a new community initiative, tread carefully and consider what success means to you.

Jake McKee, chief strategy officer at Ant's Eye View, likens the whole process to personal relationship building. "We date many more people than we marry — i.e. There’s bound to be plenty of failures in our question to create something grand," he says.

The Community Concept Isn't to Blame

You should know I’m not anti-community. I’ve been involved in “community” my entire career. In 1995 wrote a book on marketing with computer user groups (the analog to today’s online communities). In 1997 I launched and managed the ThirdAge.com community (chat and forums for baby boomers), I led product management for Dell Support Forums, and I’ve been a participant in Compuserve, eWorld, AOL, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. From these experiences I’ve concluded that communities succeed if they solve a need, share an interest/passion and/or connect me with people I care about. Facebook works because most of your and my friends are there — it solves the need to connect and stay up to date, thus carrying more weight as a "social resume." Dell support forums work because they allow asynchronous conversations to solve a technical problem for a frustrated computer user. The ThirdAge community (chat and forums) worked in certain topics where there was passion and birds of a feather could discuss that passion.

From a marketer’s perspective, the idea of a brand community sounds great. The expectation is that it will be a petri dish which will virally grow customer engagement, and this type of engagement will lead to sales. The problem is, few customers jump into that petri dish, fewer still will stick around, and the community interaction usually has no contextual bridge to purchasing. That's three strikes. Most brand communities serve a very, very small set of customers (in relation to their customer base or market size) with either a lot of passion or a lot of time on their hands. And let's face it, not every brand has the potential to inspire lasting passion and sustain a Facebook-type community. Exceptions are cult brands that have passion and community built into their product ethos, such as Harley Davidson or Apple. But you can’t create that by putting up a community. That starts way upstream, with the product and the brand.

What's a Community For?

Brand communities are configured to create social interactions between customers, allowing them to share opinions and interact via blogs, wikis, polls, forums and private messages. There are a lot of technological bells and whistles that the product manager can get excited about, but let’s look at it from the customer’s point of view. I'll repeat what I wrote earlier…the reason people participate in communities is to:

1. Solve a problem / need (or help others do so)
2. Share an interest or passion
3. Connect with people of interest (develop social capital)

#1 is the reason support forums exist, and these reduce support costs, but don't drive sales. #2 and #3 are usually what Brands are looking for, expecting community to drive engagement and sales. But when visitors are not passionate about the topic, they are less likely to jump in. If the community audience is small and unfamiliar with one another, a prospective visitor's motivation to build social capital or help others dissolves. In both cases, the vibrance and participation in the community are next to go. This causes the next visitor not to join, which in turn decreases the passion and audience size of the community. This domino effect leads most brand communities to turn into a ghost town.

A study from Deloitte reports that two of the top three obstacles to making communities work have to do with getting people to engage or visit — and the remaining issue doesn’t help solve this problem:

1. Getting people to engage
2. Finding enough time to manage
3. Attracting people to the community

The solution may lie in reframing the objective. A fully-developed Facebook-like community with thousands of regular participants is probably an unachievable — and in some cases undesirable — goal for many brands. I say undesirable because the resources required to build and maintain such a community may not be in line with the returns that they produce. Something smaller scale may not be as glamorous or provide as many opportunities to brag to your digirati friends on Twitter, but it may be just right for your brand and your customer base.

There are a few potential ways to go small. Ask yourself some questions. If you have a million customers and there are 100 community members posting occasionally, is that success? Or is it a ghost town? Gartner may be reporting that the community sticks around, but how much impact can those 100 people, or the few thousand that "watch" the interactions, have on your business? And even if those few thousand are more engaged, is the conversation related to your product or service leading to sales influence? Or is it unrelated?

Research from Communities

There's nothing wrong with creating a community with the purpose of interacting with the few. A hundred or a thousand participants in a community may not make a sizeable impact on your sales, but they can provide valuable insight. If your objectives are for research or product co-creation, then a community that facilitates that interaction between your brand team and your customers can be very successful. Customers are much more engaged when they know the purpose of the community is for the company to listen to their ideas. A very focused version of this is Dell IdeaStorm or MyStarbuckIdea.com, where customers post an idea and others vote it up or down. Simple. The measures of success there are insights gathered in a much more scaleable and frequent way than traditional market research.

Communities like this have their place, but they don't necessarily have a direct impact on sales. At least until that product co-creation happens — and most marketers probably have a shorter time-horizon to show ROI, especially in the current economy.

Sales from Social Commerce

To build a boom town — community features with a direct impact on sales — marketers need to pursue a strategy that creates interactions and contributions around the product or service they're trying to sell. This Social Commerce model fosters opportunities for the creation of content that helps others make purchasing decisions, driving more sales and resulting in a quicker ROI. This type of strategy needn't require a person to register or become a full-fledged member — they should be able to write a product review, ask or answer a question, or write a story without feeling like they have to make a commitment. Whether that contributor feels like they’ve joined a community by participating is not the point. Their contribution is useful for the visitors to the site, who came to learn more about the brand and get their questions answered — not to "friend" people or help others. And yet, once a critical mass of content is shared, a community of shared interest will start to form. People will write the 101st review because there's a community around a product! This "accidental community" starts to form, which amplifies the engagement to the content and profiles.

It's a challenging time in the social media world. Marketer interest — fueled by hype over Facebook and Twitter — in community-building is rising, just as consumers begin to tire of joining yet another social network. Rather than spending time and energy developing something that's destined to be the next brand ghost town, consider smaller ways to use social media techniques on behalf of your brand. Perhaps you want to build a community of brand loyalists to act as a focus group for product development. If you're looking to drive immediate sales, incorporating a user contribution system — reviews, Q&As, and storytelling – around products on your own Web site is the path to success (especially in the eyes of your CFO!). The trendy Facebook-clone route, however initially exciting and attention-getting, may lead to crickets and tumbleweeds, while a more measured approach may result in a thriving little settlement.

This blog was guest-written by Jen Renola, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.

PETCO “Tails” save lives…and the next life may be my own!  PETCO recently launched Bazaarvoice Stories by inviting its customers to share “The Moment Your Pet Changed Your Life.” Now I’ve been tossing around the idea of getting a pet for quite some time, and reading PETCO’s “Sentimental Tails” may be just the motivation I need.  These stories are incredible!

Stories about how people’s pets saved their lives…figuratively:

“I would like to tell you a story about a wonderful dog who saved my life in so many ways…So here is the introduction.”

Stories about how people’s pets saved their lives…literally:

“He helped me to get back into my home and then proceeded to walk me very slowly and carefully inside to a bed. I sat down and used the phone. I believe he saved my life, as I was otherwise alone and I would have been stuck there in the freezing, zero degree weather without anything to keep me warm.”

Stories about the tremendous role that PETCO has played in their lives:

“We buy all of Mercury's food, treats, (his Charlee Bears, yum!) toys, and supplies from PETCO, and although he comes with me everywhere and is welcome in every store, PETCO is, by far, his favorite place to go! He even gets to make new doggie friends sometimes. Thanks, PETCO for supporting Mercury and all service animals, and for opening your doors to animals to become a dog's social ‘hot spot!’”

These Stories have to make all of us non pet owners wonder if there is indeed something missing in our lives. And if the Stories themselves aren’t enough to make us think twice, all the photos of these adorable pets certainly are.

Once again, PETCO has proven to be a leader in leveraging user-generated content to meet the needs of its customers at every level. And as we’ve come to expect, PETCO launched Stories by incorporating Bazaarvoice’s recommended best practices: a contest promoted through a homepage banner, category page banners, and email marketing, resulting in over 80 stories submitted in the first four days of the campaign.

I can’t wait to see what’s next.  If I read many more of these, I may find myself at PETCO soon, shopping for supplies for my new pet.  Maybe by then they’ll have Stories with helpful tips for new pet owners…or suggestions for fun toys!

James Avery wanted others to hear these meaningful stories and to share the spirit of the brand without bragging. Their perfect solution was to collect “Real Stories” from their customers online and allow customers to speak for their brand. As a result, the company has increased sales, increased site traffic, and more quickly engaged new visitors with their brand . . . all by using their customers’ voices.

If you’re interested in hearing more on how James Avery and other great brands are reaping big benefits through customer engagement, join us August 19^th for a webinar with John McCullough, James Avery’s Director of Marketing, and Brett Hurt, Founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice.

You will discover:

• How brands create community and drive the bottom line through shared customer experiences
• How consumers’ stories help brands uncover the “why” and “how” of product experiences to get to the heart of what’s truly important to them
• How user-generated content increases online traffic and fueling multi-channel marketing
• How to engage your most loyal, active, and influential customers online

Title: Customer Engagement through Personal Stories: How James Avery enabled passionate clients to speak for their brand

Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Time: 1:00PM – 2:00PM CDT

Click to reserve your webinar seat now!

First, think about how any social technology will impact the prospect or customer’s “purchase momentum.” There are social technologies that create connections and communities, but the ultimate goal is driving purchases. Evaluate how salient any type of UGC or social participation is for researching, shopping, narrowing, comparing, and building confidence for prospects to buy. The closer the interaction is to a prospect’s “task,” the closer it is to helping people make their purchase decisions.

The importance of the second factor (X axis, below) is something I’ve come to realize after years of change leadership at startups, at Dell, and during the last two years seeing how the right investments in customer dialogue accelerates our clients’ social strategies. This is the depth and speed of acceptance of the proposed social initiative. I call this factor the “cultural momentum” of your initiative, and it relates to how quickly you can build excitement internally, bringing “customer oxygen” into your corporate culture! Let me explain…

Social commerce and user-generated content initiatives are new, unproven, and scary for most companies. However, I’ve seen our clients go from anxiety level “9” to hundreds of employees embracing UGC alerts, review, question, and answer reports, and actively engaging with our community managers every week. The right social initiative can create a halo effect around the whole idea of “social” for your company. If you choose the wrong initiative, though, the “social” activity becomes a fringe activity, destined to be cut.

Executives who start with ratings reviews usually start with high anxiety level, but, when they see that  85% reviews are positive, interest peaks. They start looking at the data and content. They see for the first time — perhaps because it’s now right there on their site — how customers talk about their products. It’s enlightening and relevant because it’s about the products they sell (their day-to-day jobs). The voice of the customer spreads throughout the organization and changes business decisions. It just takes one brand, category, or product manager to share a success story of how UGC changed his strategy, buying, negotiation, or merchandising. That story spreads throughout the organization, senior management applauds, and everyone jumps on board.

To evolve, you have to have this kind of momentum to get buy-in for future social initiatives and experiments. Other people in the company have to get excited about this new strategy, because as your social commerce strategy evolves it will start to tap more functions (and it should). So the first social program you enact should be one that drives this cultural momentum.

When evaluating social technologies and programs, you can plot and debate them on this simple 2×2 matrix:

What drives purchase momentum?

Write down what your customers need before they make a purchase. How do they research, shop, and evaluate? Where do they go, who do they consult, and what information do they need?

Then evaluate the social initiative on its ability to meet those shopping needs where the customer is looking. For online retailers, your customers go to shopping portals, they ask friends questions, they search Google, or they go down the purchase path of your site. Would a social network ”walled garden” on your shopping site help the majority of these customers? Would a blog? You might do those for other reasons, but they’re not in the bulls-eye of helping drive purchase momentum for the majority of customers.

Today, Ratings and Reviews are table stakes for retailers because multiple research studies have found that 70-90% of customers seek or want reviews before purchase. Customer search Google for reviews, and you want to be found. Customers use reviews to sort and filter to determine which product to buy. They need to read some level of negative reviews to feel they’ve ”vetted” the product and done their research. They need an “excuse to buy” with their spouse, and a sound bite from some reviews is as good a justification as any! Customer reviews are very aligned with purchase momentum.

What drives cultural momentum?

Three things drive cultural momentum – that internal “buzz” around social initiatives.

1) Results

The language of a business is the P&L. If your social technology can show results as close to the P&L as possible (i.e., revenue, margin, cost reduction), even the CEO will be interested. Bring your results into a senior executive meeting and they will applaud you in front of their managers and peers.

2) Data

Can you make  customer dialogue data and content useful and accessible to multiple functions in your organization? I get about four emails a week with product ideas from our clients, and the majority of them revolve around our workbench, reports, and alerts. We knew from the beginning that wide use of the customer voice and data is what would drive adoption. It’s what I’ve called the “customer oxygen” that corporations need. It drives wide interest in customer dialogue and UGC.

3) Cross-functional relevance

If you do a program that is just interesting to the online, marketing, or eCommerce teams, you’re missing a huge opportunity to engage merchants, product development, catalog, stores, customer service, training, research, and other departments. Your goal is deep and wide adoption of social marketing, so the program that has utility for other departments will accelerate cultural momentum. We see clients using answers from our Ask & Answer application for training, research, and copywriting. Reviews can be used by store managers and merchandising in email, catalogs, and advertising. The cultural momentum from these three factors increases the interest in the next investment in customer dialogue.

Where there’s ROI and high internal interest, then investment and resources follow. Simply put, that’s why you prioritize social programs that have purchase momentum and cultural momentum!

One of the Market Developers, Jeff Shoemaker, on our US Retail team sent me a link to something he knew I'd love.  He knows I'm a gadget guy and truly enjoy the insane cutting edge technology that gets released daily.  He knew I read Engadget, Joystiq, Dvice, Uncrate, XBOX360 Fanboy, PS3 Fanboy, and a few others religiously.  He knew I'd spend some hard earned cash on things that others might find to be a bit much.  So he knew I'd love a new product from Denon, the AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. 

What is it?  For a cable you'd expect $500 to get you something amazing.  This is a five foot long Ethernet cable.  Generally available for free from your IT guy or maybe $2 on numerous sites.  Now your true audiophile friends will weigh in here and say "$500 for a cable isn't that much, I spent $14,000 on bi-wiring my one ton Kharma Exquisites."  Oxygen-free copper and multi-layer wrapping is just the beginning – Wikipedia says that exotic materials like silver and "long crystal" or high-purity copper will get the best possible frequency response.  Right.  Of course that same article will go on to say that digital signals get an even hotter debate because of the "its on or off" argument around digital signals.  Yes, the Wikipedia article also says that SP/DIF signals transmit just the same over a coat hanger as they do ultra-high end cables.  Wild.

So I went to check out the 238 reviews on Amazon per the link that Jeff sent me.  With reviews titled "It Gets Me Closer To The Lord" and "Schroedingers Catbox" I knew I was in for a treat.  Some of my favorite excerpts:

• "A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the "directional markings" on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews."
• "I couldn't fit the dang thing in my computer. After about two hours of mulling it over I finally was able to figure out that this thing could be rotated 180 degrees and fit into the slot like a dream. I tried some cruddy $10 dollar Ethernet cord from Radio Shack, and even the 'click' upon inserting it into the slot sounded better."
• "At last! The quandary regarding the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics being applied to everyday objects is resolved. On behalf of the human race, I say "thank you, Denon".  To achieve said results, simply both purchase and not purchase the cable. It should also be noted that reading this review it will influence the outcome."
• "I'd note that "there is a sucker born every minute" but clearly Denon knows this. IMO their target customer would buy a Ferrari to use the door latch as a bottle opener."
• "There are holes in my ears where the hearing-stuff used to be, but it doesn't matter. Thanks to Denon, my aural drive has been completely satiated and I can live out the rest of my years in silent remembrance of the true dedication of these (I have twelve) link cables."

Clearly the internet snarkiness is getting the best of this product.  Why?  Because people aren't buying that an ethernet cable needs to cost $500.  Audiophiles will absolutely spend insane amounts on their true love.  Just like golfers will spend $500 on a new driver, every year, and driving enthusiasts will spend $100,000 on a car they love, and hardcore PC gamers will spend $1,000 on the latest video card.  But when they smell something that is just insane, they'll comment on it.  Bigtime.

What's the opportunity for Denon here?  They could respond to the community with the reasoning behind their pricing for that cable.  There are guaranteed some specs here that caused their marketing department to price a cable at that end of the spectrum.  They could also change the pricing on the product based on market feedback – and earn some customer loyalty points when it comes to future product consideration.  No matter what, the reviewers spoke passionately about what they think of this product.  I'm off to try that Ferrari bottle opener

There are many buzzwords to describe customer participation. "Community" is a word that has made a comeback from the late '90s, when a best-selling book was "Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities". In 1997 this was our 'bible' at Thirdage.com. Content, community and commerce was the mantra. Unfortunately content was too expensive and commerce was too early. Hence, I'm still working

Now "community" is back. More people are online, more eyeballs to feed ads, and more participation from the next generation of online consumers is feeding this trend. However, as Dave Evans points out in his recent ClickZ article, "community" often gets confused with the broad category of "social media". 

When I visit Fortune 500 clients I see one or more of the buzzwords above used. One word may become prominent within the organization, perhaps because the CEO or CMO went to a conference or read an article. Sometimes that buzzword is "community". I hear, "We need to build community into our site". However, what they ultimately mean is they want customer participation and customer engagement, which CAN lead to customer retention, word of mouth, and increased persuasion / conversion.

Community is perhaps the most overused term of them all, perhaps because it infers a higher level of customer engagement than user generated content or social media. Some of our clients (or more accurately, their customers) have a community on their site. Others have the opportunity to build a community with our functionality.

I've had my experience with community, as Director of Community for ThirdAge.com  and as manager of Dell.com's support forum technology for a period of time. If I learned anything it was this: Community is about customer passion, relationships and/or a sense of belonging. On Dell support forums, it was very utilitarian. However, techies ansnswer questions because they are proud of their knowledge and passionate about helping others. They had relationships with each other and Dell moderators, and liked to be part of Dell's Brand. At ThirdAge.com, a web site for baby boomers, we tried to seed topics on forums and chats, and most of the time we were way off! Customers created their own topics, and the ones that flourished are those that had drama, emotion and passionate utility. Love, sex, hobbies, local discussions, medical topics, relationships, etc. were top topics. For context, read this history of Thirdage.com community from a member (warning: midi music) and this story I wrote of a love and marriage originating on ThirdAge.com forums and chat. I also saw and participated in saving a life through ThirdAge.com chat! That's community.

For a company, the strategic 'community opportunity' is to identify the emotion in their brandtheir products and their customers. It could be something related to the prdoucts (ex: Harley Davidson), or the problem the product solves, or their advertising (ex: Geico), or their customers (celebrity customer?). On PETCO we see 700 reviews for Greenies, a $1 dog treat! Greenies has their own community within the product pages of PETCO! But that doesnt' work on Epinions, for example, which has been live for 8 years. Why would the 700th person write that review on PETCO? The combination of Greenies on PETCO (a site for pet lovers) makes it a community of passion for a product for pets they love.

As for Social Media (and I'll put user generated content, including reviews, in this category) vs. Community, Dave Evans suggests another difference between social media and community, in his article:

At its core, social media both encompasses and provides a set of tools that enable members to share and share in the information around them. It is a precursor, but not a guarantee of community. The social web, a facilitator, enables me to ask you or anyone else in my distributed network about something and facilitates you telling me and anyone else in your distributed network about it. This has implications for marketing and advertising. Primary among them: the explicit condition that participants in your community be able to freely talk and share information. Right there, most so-called communities fail. By controlling rather facilitating, the conversations become predictable, one-way monologues. It's like the CMO who went to a marketing retreat and came back enlightened about social dynamics in our age of democratization: Maoist chants of "Let a thousand flowers bloom" sound great, and look even better in contemporary mission statements. But then, just as predictably, the other shoe drops: "And if those flowers turn out to be dissidents, we can lop their heads off later." That isn't, community.

This is not to say that social media and community-inspired marketing needs to be totally open, free, and unconstrained. This is the '00s, not the '60s, as much as I wish I were back there. A bit of structure actually seems to be a good thing. As marketers, we've got jobs to do and results to which we're held accountable.