Should brands be scared of WOM?

There is an interesting debate going on between Nigel Holis and Max Kalehoff about brands and WOM.

Things started with a post from Nigel that states (refering to the Chevy Tahoe case) that:

"The problem with consumer-generated media is just that: the consumer generates the media. Consumers are in control. The example of Chevy Tahoe should give all marketers a pause for thought. If you are not a brand that is universally loved, can you afford to give control to people that may not have your best interests at heart?"

You can read Max's answer here.

Nigel answered Max today with some really good points but still, I am more inclined towards Max's views, although as I commented on Nigels' blog a way in between must exist, below are again my comments to Nigel:

Nigel - interesting feedback for Max indeed.

But still, when you say the first thing to levarge WOM is to Listen, what does this mean pratically? Will you Listen after asking questions following a typical questions and answers research process or will you listen “passively” to consumers? Or a mix of the two? Curious to hear and soon read your view point. Mine is available in some of my posts.

Second,I agree with Max and tend to disagree with you, some consumers are able to create a brand idea, not all of them of course, but some do, then our role becomes to provide them the ability to get heard, and co-create value with other consumers (to your point a vast majority can provide feedback and can react on ideas provided by others). It may sound scary, or odd for most marketers, but we did experiment this with one marketer and got some interesting findings and insights. We did this using some of Zaltam approach to storry telling, and we simply Listen in…very rich! At the end, it is of course up to the marketer to decide where to go based on what is possible indeed, but still worth trying, at least to Learn… because Learning comes from Listening indeed.

So all in one, I will say that the world is neither “black or white”, but the world is changing fast, so our approach to building brands, the future of branding is in co-creation of value between consumers and brands moving marketing from Business to Consumers, to Consumers to Business to Consumers. Check out some examples of succesfull initiatives here for example: