Achieving the balance of engaging the consumer and building a relationship through the product lifecycle could be groundbreaking for businesses and individuals but many companies are still scared of giving the consumer a voice without control and so levels of adoption are limited.

Is it as simple as they would have to consider how they collate ideas from the public? How they screen these ideas and how they can keep the consumer involved through development & launch without their competitors taking their ideas and bringing them to market faster & cheaper?

There are toes in the water…

Unilever are giving people the opportunity to create adverts for their biggest Brands

Ford have set up a dedicated website to gather ideas from the general public and allow other people to rate the ideas – the most popular will be elevated to a “most-popular” list and reviewed by Ford’s advanced product planning and marketing teams

You can join the family at Innocent Drinks and they will ask you what you think they should do from time to time.

To name but a few.

Isn’t the beauty of engagement is that it is a two way street?

Is the real two way conversation too much to expect? At the end of the day these people have to run a business. This would mean the jury is still out on if social media interaction has a tangible benefit.

Unilever are running their new campaign as a competition with a monetary prize for the winner. Is this the way engagement should be tackled? Contribution that makes a difference gets a financial reward? Would this make the consumer see this avenue as an opportunity to earn additional income or should the idea of having your idea potentially on the screen be enough?

Does this type of engagement threaten the professional services that would traditionally be involved?

In the case of Unilever the advertising campaigns have been the domain of creative agencies with in- house marketing teams but with a more demanding consumer and access to a whole new world of social media is there a more effective way to bring the consumer what THEY want?

Is there a difference between the effectiveness of professional services and a consumer community when it comes to understanding what the consumer wants?

Companies have relied on professional creatives to gain a competitive advantage and paid the price. With today’s new age social media we the consumers are at the click of a button and we’re cheap!

Are we cheap and good?

How great would it be if you thought of something you really want…

A shower gel with a different smell or an ice cream with a new flavour and you could tweet your favourite manufacturer…

They then engaged with you the loyal customer and put the idea to the vote…

It doesn’t have to end there…

They could keep you up date through the development process, let you see packaging designs, colours, launch dates and you can tell them what you like, don’t like…

Would this involvement bring a more transparent market place and stronger brand loyalty or would the consumers ‘voice without control’ prove too much?