The degree to which the digital networked environment connects and aggregates individuals has forced the crowd into the marketing equation. The crowd is made up of consumers who both consume and produce (prosumers) and to appropriately integrate them into the marketing process requires a shift in the marketing paradigm. Envisioning integrated marketing communication and brand building as the creation of a marketing ecosystem, where consumer intelligence and production sustains the organization and at the same time supports the prosumers to optimize their consumption decisions, will require a sustainable marketing model.
Sustainable marketing develops long‐term mutually satisfying relationships and co‐prosperity for all stakeholders by collaborating with the audience on the marketing process. Sustainable marketers will have to develop broader perspectives of and deeper insights into prosumers' processing, reactions, and underlying preferences. They will have to build partnership with prosumers to construct relevant marketing narratives and product offerings, inviting all facets of a prosumer's different personas to participate in the development of that narrative.
As individuals chronicle their activities, interests, and actions across the digitally connected universe, ideal material for research, communication, and promotion is offered up freely to marketers by consumers. Developing profiles or consumer clones from such data may offer insights into behavior and choice that consumers could not share, even if they were motivated to do so. To be sustainable, marketers must simply help consumers organize this information in a meaningful manner – assisting consumers in the level, timing, and composition of demand in a way that will help the individual improve consumption behavior as opposed to simply delivering on objectives of the firm. Thus, key aspects of integrated marketing communication will be the re‐education of the consumers about themselves and support for consumers to make best consumption decisions, even if this requires restructuring firm goals.