Mar 24, 2011

Savvy marketers let consumers call the shotsBy Bruce HorovitzUSAToday.com

When Baskin-Robbins launches its newest ice cream flavor in June, it won’t be one that was whipped up in the ice cream icon’s supersecret test kitchen.

This one was concocted by a 62-year-old grandmother of four. And she did it online.

“When I wake up on June 1st,” says Diane Sroga, the Chicago resident and professional numbers cruncher who created the flavor, “I’ll probably stop at Baskin-Robbins before I go to work — just to make sure it’s real.”

Once she sees it on sale, she says, she’ll know it’s not some dream. Sroga is one of more than 40,000 consumers who competed in an online contest to create the chain’s next flavor — and her Bunches of Crunches concoction (since renamed Toffee Pecan Crunch) won out. She is part of a new breed of consumer who has combined talent, digital media and moxie to move from the sidelines to the playing field of product creation.

In a world where consumers demand to call the shots, savvy marketers increasingly are finding ways to let them do just that — even in the creation of products. Mountain Dew was among the first to let consumers become fully involved in its product creations, even letting them help design new bottles and cans. More recently, Lands’ End let two kids — ages 9 and 11 — design T-shirts that it sold online.

It’s one thing to let consumers create brand commercials — as Doritos and Pepsi have done in recent Super Bowls — but it’s something else entirely to ask folks to concoct a product that could conceivably be their Next Big Thing. One thing’s for sure: Companies aren’t doing it just to be nice. They’re doing it to keep consumers engaged with the brand. They’re doing it in response to social-media-wise consumers who demand to have a direct say in the products that companies make. And they’re doing it because a growing number of brands recognize that some of the best ideas come from outside, not in.

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