A while back, I wrote a white paper called “The Collective Is The Focus Group”. A version of it was printed in BusinessWeek as well. The general point? Consumers can get feedback to any brand in real time—networks amplify what they have to say and sentiment spreads at light speed. Companies need now have to listen, learn, and adapt at all phases of an initiative.

So today as I’m flipping through the New York Times, I come a across an article describing how a micro-groundswell began against Tropicana’s package re-design. As it turns out, Tropicana consumers not only care about it—their most loyal consumers do.

“It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate
change of heart, Mr. Campbell said, because “it was a fraction of a
percent of the people who buy the product.”

Rather,
the criticism is being heeded because it came, Mr. Campbell said in a
telephone interview on Friday, from some of “our most loyal consumers.”

The article spcifies that most feedback came in through fairly traditional means including e-mail and phonecalls—but one specific thought in the article caught my attention:

“Twitter is the ultimate focus group,” Mr. Shankman said. “I can post
something and in a minute get feedback from 700 people around the
world, giving me their real opinions.”

(more…)