There are more and more examples of just how compelling the next generation of marketing can be for not only the marketer, but the marketed. I’ve been making the case more and more lately that we are now active participants in the process of marketing and publicity as things get more and more difficult to discern.

Certainly, I’m not advocating painting numbers of all of our backs (we did that years ago), but more engaging people in new and interesting ways.

Need some proof? Here’s something MINI just did with their customers.

This campaign falls in line with what Shine’s CEO Greg Sturn said last December about their proposal, “[that] It is basically about the evangelical community of owners (of Minis) and creating technological platforms that recognize those owners and allows them to do what they do — which is be evangelical about the brand,’’ Stern said. He said the agency’s pitch to the company was titled “Evolving the Mini brand without screwing it up.’’

Everything’s Better With Brentter » A MINI community

UPDATE: A new report by McKinsey discusses the drop in TV reach.  One interesting tidbit from the AdAge coverage: “CMOs have to step up to a larger role and question a host of historical assumptions of how marketing works,” Mr. French said. “They have to continue to build rich, robust and proprietary customer insights, but they have to do it from a bunch more sources.”

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