Crowdsourcing, Hold The Anchovies

Since returning from gun camp, I’ve been holed up here inside the AT&T Executive Conference Center in Austin, Texas, these past couple of days attending the Third Annual BazaarVoice Social Commerce Summit.

There’ve been a lot of buzzwords about the continued evolution of the social media, how consumers (particularly in the retail space, but also in B2B) are leveraging the opportunity to exude peer influence in a big way using tools like Twitter, Facebook, et al.

Me, I drank this Kool-Aid long ago, having gotten on the Cluetrain in the late 1990s.

But judging from the audience size, which has clearly grown from last year’s Summit — as has the BazaarVoice customer set — others are getting on the train and fast.

Which is a good thing.

The more the merrier, I say.

The faster we evolve towards a transparent marketing orientation around the globe, the faster consumers and business people everywhere can enjoy better products and services, and more open communication between themselves and their producers.

Of course, as BazaarVoice CEO Brett Hurt explained in his opening comments, the age of social media isn’t something we should be surprised by.

Ever since our friends the cavemen (the real ones, not the ones from Geico) stood around swapping stories in front of the campfire, word of mouth has ruled as the most ubiquitous and influential form of marketing.

The difference today is, word of mouth is now an archived medium. Everything you say can and will be recorded in perpetuity on Google and can and will be held against — or, as the case may be — for you or your brand.

Sam Decker, survivor of Dell Hell and now BazaarVoice chief marketing officer, related a story during his opening comments that better tells the tale.

Dominos Pizza (Full disclosure: I was once employed as a Dominos pizza maker and driver) recently underwent a brand transformation, one in which their pizza recipe was completely overhauled after being informed by social media input from its customer base.

After the recipe was overhauled based on that crowdsourced input, Dominos then put up a Twitter feed requesting unvarnished input from the crowd, good and bad, about their new pizza.

Overwhelmingly, folks seemed to agree the new pizza was much improved from the old, and in turn Dominos realized a stock boost of some 75% after the new recipe launched.

A coincidence?  You decide, but make sure you also watch Domino’s new and very open and transparent TV commercials, in which my former employer admitted as much that their old pizza recipe sucked.

I’ve not ordered one of the new Dominos pizza yet, but based on this new information, and the fact that the crowd helped vet the new pizza makings for Dominos, I can assure you I will.

But please, hold the anchovies.