You know you're busy when the New York Times dedicates a front-page story in the Sunday Business Section to your company and you wait nearly 48 hours to blog it! Better late than never, I suppose. Still, if you are looking for validation and "reason to believe" that CGM is the real deal, and that brand monitoring is evolving into a real, legitimate, and widely adopted part of the new marketing mix, this article fits the bill. Entitled "Branding for the Chattering Masses," the writer, Keith Schneider, using Nielsen BuzzMetrics as his backdrop, asks all the right questions about whether CGM, and in particular CGM analysis and text-mining, is destabilizing the typical "go to market" strategy for most brands. He writes:
...the branding game has changed radically, largely because of the myriad choices the Internet provides consumers and because of the economic influence of widespread Web pontificating, known as the blogosphere, which barely existed as a popular force until about four years ago...As consumers eagerly post word-of-mouth commentary in online communities, message boards and Web logs, a straightforward question confronts brandmeisters: Who wins and who loses as time-tested practices of mass production and mass marketing are undermined by the informed and often cranky voices of the knowledge age?
The writer spent a full day with us in our Cincinnati Office (our headquarters in located in VNU's Greenich Village office in NYC and we also have offices in Tel Aviv, Israel and Pittsburgh), which deepened his perspective on this growing space. He also talked to quite a few of our clients (if you are reading, thank you) and industry experts like Peter Kim of Forrester and Emily Riley of Jupiter. Beyond the personal excitement of having something you've worked on so long validated and recognized, what most excited me about the article was how it put our work in the broader context of how advertising and marketing is changing. As he notes:
Both Mr. Kim and Ms. Riley said the old methods for keeping track of consumer sentiment, measuring the competition and improving advertising were in rapid transition. Traditional media are fragmenting. Focus groups are expensive, constrained and slow. New research shows that consumers are eager to evade advertising on television, block pop-up ads on the Internet and sign up for “do not call” lists to bar telephone solicitations....At the same time, new surveys show that 90 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth suggestions, and that some make purchases based on such guidance.
One key point I strived to reinforce in the article is that without developing operational models to systematically listen to this new, outspoken, and highly persuasive consumer, brands are essentially walking with blindfolds on. 
Indeed, "we're brand radar," he quotes me as saying. "You can't fly a plane without radar."
It's the right metaphor, I think, because in today's environment, small blips can quickly become viral disasters if you're not paying close attention to the radar screen. But radar can also be "offensive." Brands that "listen and respond" tend to be more efficient with resources. Listening helps put the brakes on bad decisions, and can enable smarter directions. Radar helps forecast emerging needs, from website content to the ideal messaging for emerging audiences. John Bell of Digital Influence/OgilvyPR offers some supporting thoughts on the power of listening on his blog.
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