In yesterday's AMA webinar (Online Communities + Market Research), I briefly mentioned that General Mills was using community for market research and consumer insights.  Given the great questions during and after the webinar (some of which occurred on twitter), I figured I'd provide a little more detail here.

So far, General Mills has launched four HiveLive-powered insights communities running in parallel, for well-known brands such as Nature Valley and Yoplait.  Each of these brand communities engages about 50 select members and has its own set of community and research activities (like discussions, idea generation, concept testing, etc.).  Researchers, product owners, and participants are actively engaged in daily, continuous conversations.  Across the whole environment and in a very short time, there have been about 1,100 posts with nearly 15,000 responses/comments, and counting.

We've been fortunate to work with some fantastic and forward-thinking folks at General Mills on these community projects.  I've been amazed at how readily and capably they are rolling up their sleeves, jumping right in, and directly interacting with their brand communities.  In an industry where many brand-to-consumer interactions are through blind studies and based on researcher-subject relationships, it's refreshing to see this new face of market research.

When it comes to customer communities, we've always believed that the heart and the start of community is with insights.  It's been great to see, first hand, how the ongoing, on-demand, continuous nature of community applies to market research.  The potential for communities to impact how big brands engage and understand their customers, and ultimately innovate, is clearly exciting.