There's an adage that is an apt description of the new dynamic at work between brands and consumers connected through social media: People support what they help to build. But now that many brands are launching community-driven cause marketing campaigns the challenge becomes what to do next?

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean 'wrong' in two senses. Firstly they are marketing ineffectively and secondly as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.

Brands mature over time like a marriage. The bond you feel with your spouse is different than when you first met each other. Excitement and discovery are replaced by comfort and depth.

I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I'll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don't taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.

Let's hope brands recognize that the true power of this technology is not its reach but its ability to communicate substance that adds meaning to our lives. Otherwise brands will be investing in technology that consumers simply won't buy.

In fact I believe the first companies that make an effort to develop an authentic transparent and meaningful social contract with their fans and customers will turn out to be the ones that are the most successful in the future. While brands that refuse to make the effort will lose stature and customer loyalty.

'Survivor' wouldn't have happened had I not gone out there and helped CBS to sell sponsors to finance the first one. Part of my thinking on 'Survivor' was that it should have rewards that are corporate brands. A Big Mac one thimble-full of Coca-Cola.

Ultimately it's possible that social media platforms will be designed as templates that the users themselves customize in terms of the best way to express their community and experience of life and brands will have to simply follow suit.

We now see numerous examples of brands working together to address issues such as environmental degradations climate control pollution poverty and disease.

Brands must have a point of view on that purposeful engagement whether it's directed towards the environment poverty water as a resource or causes such as breast cancer or education. Merely declaring your commitment to a category or cause will not be enough the distinguish your brand sufficiently to see a return on these well-intended efforts.

I am extremely involved in the design process of both my brands Winter Kate and House of Harlow 1960.

Brands must empower their community to be change agents in their own right. To that end they need to take on a mentoring role. This means the brand provides the tools techniques and strategies for their customers to become more effective marketers in achieving their own goals.

The creative destruction that social media is currently unleashing will change more than technology or the leader board of the Fortune 100. It is driving a qualitative shift in the nature of relationships between brands and their customers.

The question remains: which brands will commit to creating a private sector pillar of social change and which will become casualties of their own outdated thinking?

The new dynamics between brands and consumers driven by social media are proving to be a powerful impetus for change.

I definitely love that all these car brands are coming out with hybrid forms of every car that they have. It's very awesome because I think it does make a difference and it doesn't hurt that you save a lot of money on gas.

In the social business marketplace brands that hope to build loyal and growing communities do so most effectively when they demonstrate their core values and allow a community to build and engage around it.

The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause.

Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal.

What today's business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically socially ethically and morally.

Walmart is an amazing story of entrepreneurship and as one of the world's most powerful brands touches millions of lives every day.