Consumers become prosumers!

There have been a lot of discussions about Internet’s deep impact on communication and use of media, what directly affects marketing and advertising industry. We can speak about new consumers. Thinking Viral local research has shown that the 12 – 24 year old almost don’t use traditional media and have rich Internet experience. As a result of social media advertisers no longer have a control of their brands. Consumers want to be drew in the branding, they have become ‘prosumers'.

Louise Marsland states, that consumers know more about company’s brand than company do, therefore they “are sharing that knowledge with millions of other people around the world”. Word of mouth due to Internet invasion has become more powerful way of information dissemination. Thinking Viral local research revelled that Internet generation trust unknown peers more than the experts and in general they have little interest in the information source as a result if message is very positive made by consumers, brand can become popular in moment, but the same if opinions are negative – consumers can promote and kill brand as well.

The BIG question – how advertisers can cope with the social media’s character? For sure traditional brand management techniques aren’t appropriate more. Firstly, it’s about reputation, so Online reputation management is the key. Therefore brand communication strategy’s success depends a lot on advertisers’ willingness to understand consumers and new media literacy. Stopforth and Kent give some guidelines on this.