I just found this article from the LA Times about how to make social networking technologies work for you. As I see social networking tools as having quite a role to play in engaging consumers in product co-creation in future, I had a good read through. However, the part of the article which caught my attention described how consumers had complained repeatedly about the packaging on the Tide.com message board and yet didn’t seem to have been listened to. I might be being a bit niaive but this is P&G we are talking about here and I was shocked that the Tide message board didn’t contain any response from the company. I thought P&G was supposed to be good at listening to it’s customers. I thought the consumer was their boss. I’ve had a look on Tide.com myself and it seems to be full of unanswered complaints and customers “itching and switching” (just made up that phrase – perhaps a career in advertising awaits) away from Tide. If you look carefully there is an occasional positive comment but in the ratio of about 1 in 30. I’m not quite sure what the P&G plan is for the site but it doesn’t seem to have worked in terms of engaing consumers in the Tide brand. As an innovator, I couldn’t help myself so I started to pick out some potential breakthrough areas which might resonate for a lot of consumers (what about a Tide product which avoided animal testing for example?). I think P&G actually could have a very useful innovation and brand building resource here with their website but only when they start to show the world that they can listen.�