Digital Design Blog

Forrester: Your customers are revolting

Check out the 2007 Forrester Research Consumer Forum if you need any convincing that digital brands must behave differently than offline brands.

This year’s forum takes a thorough look at the firestorm that consumers have ignited through their use of social media technologies to become brand advocates and critics. Forrester analysts Christine Overby and Carrie Johnson assert that consumers’ adoption of personal blogs, product review sites, and community sites has broken the traditional marketing funnel. They argue, It’s time to kill the traditional marketing funnel, which was created when marketers had more control over the relationship with consumers. No longer can a marketer pull you through a funnel leading from awareness to purchase.

Instead, consumers are disrupting the funnel by building great brands and products of their own. Charlene Li states flatly that “Your customers are revolting.” They’ve adopted social computing technologies to talk with each other about your brand, and there’s no turning back. She urges marketers to embrace the revolt.

For instance, marketers can enter the brand conversation by adopting social media technologies of your own — or find consumers who will become brand advocates for you in their own blogs and community sites. Clearly, we’re talking about a complete change in the way we thinking about branding, and it’s a digital phenomenon, too.

At Avenue A | Razorfish, we’ve been helping companies embrace the revolt in many ways, such as the launch of the Expedia MySpace page and the Conde Nast Flip.com site for teen girls. You can read more about embracing your digital brand in the essay “Digital Darwinism” from the Digital Design Outlook report.