Marketers no longer control all of their touchpoints with consumers, so companies have to learn to "let go," according to Kent Oldham, Proctor & Gamble's associate director and GBS consumer view solutions manager.

Speaking at a presentation during the 2006 National Center for Database Marketing Conference in Florida, Oldham said trust is a key issue in this new world of marketing, writes DM News (via MediaBuyerPlanner). If consumers don't trust you, they won't open up to you. And all it takes is one negative experience for a consumer's trust in a company to be destroyed, he said.

Though marketers can no longer control every customer's experience with a brand, they can learn from each experience, according to Oldham. P&G does so by building marketing mix models and learning what the effective rate of return is on television, print and other media.

The company is participating in Project Apollo, the joint market research venture between Nielsen and Arbitron that will collect multi-media and product-purchase information from a common sample of consumers.