Marketing power 2

American Express has also put RGM to work. Its Members Project, launched in 2007, invited card holders to submit worthy humanitarian projects - and to vote on which would receive funding through Amex's substantial donations ($2.5 million in its second year). In 2008, the site attracted 1.8 million visitors - imagine doing that with a conversation about credit cards!

More recently, Liberty Mutual has launched the Responsibility Project, which invites user comments on the theme of personal responsibility, and works to link it back to the Liberty's business of insurance. Liberty saw a 17% gain in auto insurance premium revenues after the project launched.

Done right, reflected glory marketing allows virtually any brand - even the wallflowers - to tap the power of social media. You can use RGM to foster the kind of online conversations that build relationships with your customers. You can use it to solidify or strengthen your brand. And you can use it to deliver the sales results that Dove, Amex and Liberty Mutual have all achieved.

But the real power of reflected glory transcends its marketing impact. When your company digs deep to find the resonant themes that connect you with your customers, you are reconnecting to your most profound strengths, and to the essence of your brand. By surfacing those strengths in the social context of the Internet, you're able to reinterpret, re-envision and even re-engineer your core value proposition. In partnership with your customers, and using emergent social media platforms, you may find new ways of translating what makes you great into great products, services or value.

And you may find that the glory of a successful, resonant campaign isn't the only thing reflected back at you. Hold the social web up as a mirror - look at yourself through the eyes of your customers - and you'll uncover new possibilities for growth and innovation that your reflected glory efforts can help deliver.