Consumers are smart, savvy and prepared to work with marketers to get the products they want. Is your business ready for them?

With today's consumer-centric Internet culture and its emphasis on interactivity, personalization and transparency, the consumer's influence on brand has never been more powerful. We see that smart and brave companies are embracing this reality by allowing consumers to lead through collaborative relationships. Call it the "voice of the consumer," or "engage and co-create;" we see it as "collaborative relationships" between individual consumers and the brand.

Interacting within their communities, consumers explore, converse, design, challenge and innovate. When brands are part of the community they become part of that collaboration. Successful marketers are creating processes and technologies as well as cultural changes that enable their brands to gain competitive advantage. This culture is grassroots, continuous, and intense. This is the ultimate in consumer-centricity.

Successful companies succeed when they are both smart and brave, and apply their learning as decisive action in the marketplace. YouTube, MySpace, Second Life, and even traditionally "closed process-driven" firms like IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Starwood are companies where collaborative relationships have defined their offering in recent years. Procter & Gamble expects that by 2010, 50% of all its new product ideas will come from outside the company.

There is a profound opportunity for marketers to embrace this consumer-centric approach by leveraging technology. Engaging the consumer is not about suggestion boxes on the counter, contests, online bulletin boards or panels. It's about using technology and processes to build two-way relationships that empower the consumer to dynamically affect brands. Consumers provide ongoing and instantaneous idea generation, and input on their needs, attitudes and values. This leads to communities of interest that take on lives of their own, linking networks of unique new consumer segments to the brand. In just over three years, Second Life has gone from zero to over three million users creating content and a startling new social network. Some companies like IBM work with collaborative communities and can save billions per year in R&D costs.

Rick Wolfe, president of PostStone Corporation, a Toronto research consultancy, says executives are waking up and realizing that "if it makes sense for the customer, then do it." The best path to making sense is getting inside the consumer's life. "Live with them, get to know them and understand what they are about," continues Wolfe. It's important to ask the right questions like "Tell me about your life and what you value" or "How do you want it to be better?" Online communities provide marketers new ways to leverage information to build stronger relationships with consumers and let them design their own solutions for their own individual needs.

Brave ideas occur when the consumer can dynamically experience the brand. Starwood recently launched aloft hotel, which currently exists only online. The virtual hotel invites guests to tour the property, walk around the lobby, have an avatar swim in the pool, and watch a sunset from the rooftop terrace. Visitors are asked to comment on the design and feedback is shared with the architects and design team.

"Leadership, culture and discipline are key ingredients enabling successful collaborative relationships," says Wolfe. Our experience shows us that like any other strategic business imperative, this new consumer-centric collaboration must be led from the top, and driven through the whole organization. Consumers and the brand must come face-to-face in a collaborative relationship, both online and offline. It requires the discipline and flexibility to embrace and celebrate a new age of consumer control and choice.

We've observed many marketers who are embracing collaborative brand relationships, but many are still marketing to consumers, instead of with consumers. "The future will show us a new horizon for consumer collaboration. When we get to the next level of consumer sovereignty, we'll see and act on the reality in new and different ways," says Wolfe. One thing is for sure, our customers, as well as yours, will continue to demand collaboration on their terms – as people, not brand consumers. As marketers, are we up for it?

DAVID KINCAID is president and CEO, and PETER S. DRUMMOND is vice-president and senior advisor, Level5 Strategic Brand Advisors in Toronto (www.level5.ca)