I'm still reading Communities Dominate Brands (slowed down because of CIM exams) but its a great read. I particularly enjoy all the examples in the book which as always in whatever context helped to bring the ideas alive and resonate with the reader (well me anyway). Blogging over at the linked site Tomi notes two related pieces in the Economist and Business Week:
In March the Economist said that community-empowered customers were such a dramatic change to business, that it threatened the very survival of all businesses in all industries. Today's Business Week says this is the biggest change to business "...since the Industrial Revolution".
This is heady stuff. The stuff of revolution? Certainly the stuff of step change evolution. Change (evolve) or you're dead!
At ntl their was an interesting development in this area where the commnity developed around an anti-ntl stance. ntl eventually responded by taking the site in-house i.e. they bought the site and gave its owner a job. The community bristled but because little overtly changeed it proceeded okay. The onwer for various reason got fed up becuase of the way ntl is, and ntl decided to close the site. What does community do? Develops its own site and brings that up. Not only that but because people like the ntl product but not the service surrounding it, they also developed self-help groups and user communities. Interestingly all of these forums have ntl employees actively engaged with them BUT none are offically sanctioned or even approved of by management (unless this has changed in the last few months).
My point here is to emphasise that communities simply go around the brand. ntl at best is a label rather than a brand but neverthe less, the lower level links of customers to employees mitigate to a certain extent the deficiencies of the brand, although they course also highlight the inadequacy of ntl's approach.
Its an interesting example which I am sure is being repeated elsewhere, particularly in the service industry. The idea od Open source support as well as open souorce marketing (branding?) can be extremely powerful if organisations were to accept that they cannot control and that they must now work in partnership with customers.
Excited - yep!
Scared - of course!
But then that's what makes life so interesting... :)
Edit - just noticed that James has linked to Business Week too noting its Open Source credientials.