First off, I think definitely think we should be sponsoring high school beer chugging competition in Missouri!

I agree that new marketing needs to be baked into the product, after all, great marketing of a turd does not change the fact that you are marketing a turd.

I do however think that conversation and collaboration are near cousins if not identical twins (in the sense that we are referring to them).

Take Dell’s Ideastorm. It is a wiki that allows for collaboration and conversation and all roads supposedly lead back to R&D (at this point I am not so sure that I believe this approach is working for Dell, as I am still hearing horror stories daily).

As for your comment on brand love, yes it is best to find it, foster and grow it, but I imagine there is much more brand love out there (that is not as big as the type of love we see for Apple) that has simply gone unnoticed. I think marketers need to do a better job of listening and they will be able to find more points where collaboration can become a viable solution.

Content Is King – The social media revolution has definitely put real content creation in the hands of the consumers, which from a different angle can look a lot like competition to marketers (Long Tail). Consumers have X amount of time each day to watch YouTube. Given the choice, they’ll probably choose the video their friend made of themselves drinking beer, than the mashup they made of your movie trailer. Maybe the future is product placement deals with high school kids in Missouri.

Collaboration Is King – Now we’re on to something. But exactly what? The best consumer generated content is created organically, by brand loyalists, out of brand-love. We can try to spark it, but it won’t run as deep. We need to find it already growing and then nurture it and help it spread. Until then… who wants another Facebook app? Hurry up. They’re goin’ fast!

So which “C” will be King in 2008? Conversations? A Combination of all of the above? I’ll go along with Mr. Warner’s peer-to-peer approach and Ms. Mooney’s consumer-honed end product thesis. What’s clear (as Godin has pointed out) from both ideas is that new marketing needs to be baked into the product from conception. It can no longer be an afterthought. This also requires the long-term follow-through of customer service. In fact I’ll predict the “C” that will be King in 2009 is a new Customer Service aided by the internet in ways we’ve yet to imagine.

You are certainly correct that this is easier said than done, but that does not mean it cannot be done.

I love the quote and am adding the book you suggested to my wish list!

However, you’ve hit the nail on the head Adam when you say that, in the new year, more marketers should “begin to realize that collaboration will produce far greater results than any singular constituent could ever hope to produce.”

We have a huge opportunity to create and learn from direct communication and feedback channels between companies and consumers. If you haven’t already checked it out, I think you’d enjoy reading Brand Hijack by Alex Wipperfurth. Wipperfurth says, “Scrap the focus groups, fire the cool chasers, and hire your audience…Facilitate your most influential and passionate consumers in translating your brand’s message to a wider audience.”

As this collaboration moves forward, I think what we’ll see develop out of all of this is that consumers will begin asking for a more formal stake in the end product. Consumers are handing over their ideas, feedback and content. There will be a stronger push to make the payoff for collaboration really meaningful to the consumers as well as the company.

I love your question so much that I am going to post it as it’s own post and attach a PDF of an essay I wrote and hopefully start another conversation, as this is something that I know many people out there have thoughts on…