Ten years ago I coined the term Wikibranding when it occurred to me that social media would cause brands to become increasingly crowd-defined. Ten years later, The NY Times has reached the same conclusion. :)
From today's article: "Social media is the new TV. In the era when television shaped mainstream consumer sentiment, companies enjoyed enormous power to alter their image through advertising. Then came the internet, which didn’t kill advertising, but did dilute its power. Brands now have little say over how their messages get chewed up through our social feeds. Yes, they can run ads on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and everyplace else. But social media elevates consumers over corporate marketing; suddenly what matters isn’t what an ad says about a company, but what your friends think about that company."