Wikibrands

REINVENTING YOUR COMPANY IN A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN MARKETPLACE

FOREWORD BY DON TAPSCOTT, Bestselling author of Wikinomics

"A must-read for business leaders, managers, and just about anyone who wants to recognize and tap into the incredible creative energy of customers and stakeholders." -- Richard Florida, bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class

"Marketers should follow the course laid out by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, which leads us into a new brand future of pull, not push, and of conversation, not control." -- B. Josep h Pine II, bestselling author, The Experience Economy

"Thoughtful, innovative, and most of all practical. If your organization wants to deploy technology to build better client relationships, Wikibrands will show you how." -- Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author, Never Eat Alone

"Your brand can share control to create value. With the changing role of consumers, every brand is a lie, not a promise. But Wikibrands offers marketers a rich understanding of how social media can drive engagement for brands that make them true." -- Ross Mayfield , Chairman, President, and co-founder, Socialtext

"A must-read for the hungry marketer!” -- Julie Roehm, Backslash Meta, LLC

"The path forward presented in Wikibrands is brightly illuminated, helping change the landscape in an area ready for consumer-driven, open innovation." -- David Smith, Global Managing Director, Accenture, and Co-Author ofWorkforce of One : Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization

“"A behind-the-curtain look at how you should be engaging your customer directly in the branding process. Ignore this important book at your own peril." -- Saul Kaplan, Founder and Chief Catalyst, Business Innovation Factory

What is a Wikibrand?

It's the next generation of business building thattaps into the true power of social networks, brandconnections, and customer participation to build real value. It's a status update on Facebook, a rave on Twitter, a review on YouTube, and so much more. It's the herald of a new golden age in customer freedom and individualized customer service.

It's the future of business--and this book is your wake-up call, strategy guide, and road map to what's ahead.

In Wikibrands, acclaimed media marketing experts Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover show you how to take advantage of the exciting new models of business and technologies--and enthusiastic online communities--one click at a time.

Built on continuing research from Don Tapscott's trailblazing $10 million research project, which formedthe basis of bestselling books such as Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital, this book delivers hundreds of the best examples from today's most successful businesses. You'll learn how to:

• ENGAGE THE CUSTOMER through social influence, word of mouth, and user-generated content
• CREATE AN EXPERIENCE affected by customer-driven ratings, reviews, and online culture
• BUILD A COMMUNITY through microblogging, prosumerism,and crowdsourcing
• MAKE A CONNECTION that is truly authentic, collaborative, and value enhancing

Whether you work with an established business and are looking to make it relevant to today's "wikiconsumers" or are launching a start-up from scratch, Wikibrands offers countless creative ideas for defining and reaching out to your target audience.

You'll find refreshing new ways and a FLIRT model to help you open up an honest dialogue with your customers, attract a ready-made fan base through shared interests, and even work with other businesses toward a mutually rewarding goal. These are the latest tricks of the trade, used by hot brand names such as Mozilla Firefox, lululemon,and Zappos; industry giants Starbucks, Dell, and Harley-Davidson; and other less well-known organizations.

This is how you turn merely buzzworthy brands into full-fledged wikibrands. Sean Moffitt is President of Agent Wildfire Strategy & Communications, a leading social influence, word-of-mouth, and customer engagement firm.An internationally known speaker and Web expert, he has reinvented brands as a client and partner for Molson, Guinness, Procter & Gamble, and numerous Fortune 500 companies and start-ups.Mike Dover is Managing Partner of SocialstructAdvisory Group. As Vice President, ResearchOperations, for New Paradigm (formerly nGeneraInsight), he oversaw the research programs for thebestselling books Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital.He also has provided review support for more thana dozen other books.Continue the reinvention of your business atwiki -brands .com

Don Tapscott is an internationally renowned speaker and the bestselling author of The Digital Economy and co-author of Blueprint to the digital Economy, Paradigm Shift, and Who Knows. He is chairman of the Alliance for converging Technologies which represents the collaborative effort of ca. 40 of the world's leading technology, manufacturing, and retail organizations. He is also the president of the New Paradigm Learning Corporation.