“Consumers will have these conversations anyway”

Stumbled across this interesting article about the mobile marketing, teens, and conversational marketing, and loved the following quote from Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC:

“Advertisers are terrified of [conversational marketing]. In their hearts, many really don’t want to interact with customers because they are afraid that either there will be no conversation or someone will say something bad about their product.”

“My reply to brands with this approach is really quite simple – consumers will have these conversations anyway, with you or without you, so you may as well be there and correct it when you can, and sometimes you’ll just have to step back and let them say what they want to say.”