Catherine Taylor of Social Media Insider makes a point that no marketer should ignore. In her observation of the mommy blogger summit Blogher she notes that brands are building relationships with influencers rather than running ads.
Money quote:
“I’m going to quote a competitor to Mediapost, Advertising Age, but its packaged-goods reporter, Jack Neff, said it best: [...]

The problem with our current business models
There is a seismic change going on in the way companies communicate with their customers and prospects. In the traditional model there are three company departments that communicate with their market, typically in a silo-ed manner:

Product Development. Through research, including panels and focus groups, savvy product developers try out [...]

Over 12,000 journalists lost their jobs in 2008. 11 papers folded print editions this week. My local paper, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, supposedly one of the Gannett chain’s most profitable papers, laid off over 40 people recently. Their A section, which is national news and opinion, had a total of six pages yesterday [...]

Can you imagine a company that was started less than ten years ago and is now worth $104 billion dollars that never spent a cent on advertising? How about an online application that has over 200 million users and never spent a penny on advertising? Or a local bar that was spending $800/month on print [...]

This morning I responded to several direct messages on Twitter, made plans for meeting friends for drinks on Facebook, added an RSS feed to a Group I administer on LinkedIn and now I’m writing a blog post in Wordpress. I consider each of these platforms to be necessary for different reasons, at this point.
At this [...]