What a heretical and courageous statement from Pete: What's more critical in this down economy: improving marketing effectiveness or inspiring the enterprise? At the ARF, we are hearing totally different words from 5 years ago about how research can get a seat at the table. 5 years ago, we were talking about accountability, better models, dashboards...today, leaders are talking about inspiration, storytelling, synthesis, and hiring people based on their business acumen. We are hearing that marketers who will make it are going to have to be "fast learners". Pete has uttered the unthinkable--that there might be a more important role for research to play than marketing ROI calculations...it can lead an organization to put the human at the center of their thinking and find the insight that leads to legendary marketing breakthrough. joel Rubinson, Chief Research Officer, The ARF –NEW YORK, NY

Great article. I particularly like your holistic view of the efficiencies social media can offer a company. Joel - agency:2 http://thesocialmediatwitter.com/live –london

Pete hits the nail on the head in the title with the words "Efficiency Driver". Our mission with www.Quired.com is to help bring this message to small business owners with less than 100 employees. Yes Procter & Gamble is getting it but the power of social media is when Jill's Diner and Pete's Bowling Alley get it. It is when small business operators begin to tighten up their feedback loop through social media is where we will begin to see real progress. Small business owners are responsible for the majority of jobs in America, we need to start showing them how these tools are no longer a playground for chat but a viable tool to help sustain and grow their business. This article outlines an important narrative for the small business owner to consider. Thank you Pete for illustrating the points so well. –Avondale, AZ

BLACKSHAW: "We need to rethink the entire notion of ROI." CHAPEL: Translation... We've racked our brains about this and have come up with nothin'... so, let's lower expectations and change the rules. BLACKSHAW: "But social media softens the silos." CHAPEL: ...As well as brain cells and business discipline. It celebrates that actually! BLACKSHAW: "It's hard to turn over a rock in social media, dip your toe into Twitter or comment on someone's blog without rethinking the fundamentals of a firm's organization." CHAPEL: I've turned over a lotta rocks in social media. The things that crawl underneath have lots in common, one thing in particular: They DO NOT understand the basis of the fundaments of a organization in the first place. Layers and layers of make believe business theory by people with empty pockets who cannot balance their own overdrawn check books. BLACKSHAW: "Social media, at the end of the day, is about reinventing communication." CHAPEL: Exactly. However, the issue is that 'communications' is fundamentally human and timeless. The social media evangelists are trying blindly to reinvent 'human' all based on EMPTY platitudes. In your words Pete, "You could even argue that it's the long-overdue realization of one-to-one marketing that we over-romanticized back in the 1990s." Yep. And if you remember, most ad guys were high at the time. I could go on but the rest is just the same refried social media blather. It's sounds so like Werner Erhard's EST http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training . Note: It took about ten years for that garbage philosophy to run its course. - Amanda –Chicago, IL

Pete- Right on. The application of social media as a change agent is huge, and (still) largely ignored. It gets right at the fundamental (need for) connection between CMO and COO -- it's understanding the way in which the experience drives the conversation (marketing stimulus/retardant), and then acting (internally/biz process) in response to leverage or correct as applicable. D –AUSTIN, TX

Let's not forget that Twitter and other social media is not as relevant today as it will become. We're talking about a change in the fundamentals in communication that Twitter is just one part of. What scares the companies that block Twitter or run from blogging? Uncertainty. A fundamental change is scary stuff and - as you point out, Pete - conservative companies aren't running to embrace this. But out of chaos comes order. This is a transformational experience. We're living through the labor pains, giving birth to a new information and communication age. Companies will evolve or die. –Powell, OH

Responding to the "representativeness" question, good listening puts all voices in context. I do believe "passionate" consumers are increasingly important to listen to even if they are not the segment that sits in the "fat middle" of the bell curve. While at P&G, the "power moms" we used for focus groups to put Bounty paper towels to the ultimate "torture test" we not your "typical" consumer but they were infinitely more revealing of brand value (or flaws). Then there's the issue of messaging. The vocal and passionate consumers today tend to be the ones who create content (e.g. consumer generated media) that intercepts other consumers in the buyer funnel. The reviews that show up in Google search results rarely come from "typical" consumers, but they disproportionately shape early perceptions. No different than great targeted advertising. So all this needs to be put in context. Marketers need listen with their radar primed to different needs and objectives. Thanks for the feedback -- really! - Pete Blackshaw –COVINGTON, KY

Thanks for this article, Pete. It's one of the most cogent and sensible articles on social media i've read in a long time. I am in the early stages of research on the possible correlations between use of social media like Twitter and reflective practice/organizational learning, which might be another part (albeit hard-to-measure) of future considerations of ROI. –bloomington, IN

Pete: Good take on SocMed and organizational change. I wonder about how closely we should listen to social media, though, given its small size and easy access. Twitter is still a very small percentage of any company's total user base - and blogs in general only reach a low single digit level. Does this qualify as "listening" when we're only hearing a small (and unbelievably vocal) subset of our market's voice? At best, we hear a piece of what our market is saying - at worst, we assume a small and very biased subset speaks for the whole. Gathering tweets may be interesting but I don't think it can be seen as representative or projectable - do you? And yet, brands from Tropicana to Motrin jump when Twitter says jump. Another story for another day. Thanks! Regards, Stephen Denny www.note-to-cmo.com –Watsonville, CA