Citizen Marketers

I came across a really interesting concept called Citizen Marketers - which is actually the title of the book written by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. They market their book as a culteral guide rather than a business or marketing guide and they examine significant changes caused by social media. Just glimpsing at the excerpt from Chapter 1 - about the 4 F's leaves me curious to read more. Here is a short extract:

"Chapter 1: Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators, and Firecrackers
People who create content on behalf of products, brands, companies or other people can be classified into four different categories: Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators and Firecrackers. The 4 F's. From the professional journalist whose part-time hobby of maintaining the Starbucks Gossip blog (Filter), to the blogger who loves McDonalds and wants the company simply to be "awesome" (Fanatic), to the car owner who maintains an online community for fans of the Mini Cooper (Facilitator), to the teenager who unwittingly drove up sales of a webcam brand with her impromptu video demonstration on YouTube (Firecracker), the work of the citizen marketer is varied but the categories are often remarkably consistent."

There is also a webinar coming up on Thursday, June 26th - stay tuned as I will post it.

The Food Inspiration Market

In the last few days, I have been to interesting discussions about how to inspire consumers about food. As a member of the Marketing Association in Stockolm, we have monthly breakfast seminars. This month’s seminar was about the marketing of a very traditional Swedish food – hard bread (knäckebröd) - by the main Swedish manufacturer - Wasa. This might not be a familar food item at an American grocery store, but this is one of the main food staples of the Swedish palette. Their communication platform is based on getting consumers to change their bread habits and switch from soft bread to hard bread. To inspire consumers to change their behaviour, Wasa has collaborated with a famous American chef to produce a cookbook entitled “I love knäckebröd”. Wasa has also asked consumers to be involved in product development. While they aim to inspire consumers about hard bread in their daily cooking and to think about the healthy aspects of their products, there was little discussion about consumers inspiring each other. In today’s world of social marketing and consumer-to-consumer marketing or buzz marketing, this is an opportunity that is not yet incorporated into the overall marketing activities.