The key decision makers and top influencers are continuously forming their perceptions and opinions on various topics and brands. The topics and subjects that they are thinking about drive the kind of online groups and social forums they join and follow.

These online groups/ virtual communities are analogous to sub-cultures that share similar perceptions and preferences. These perceptions and preferences, held by CXOs of organizations, play a major role in the decisions around what brand they would buy, and which brand they would hire for service.

Some of the questions that every brand marketer is grappling with include: How do brands influence the buyers in the digital Universe? How does branding reach the digitally active consumer? How can branding reach & influence the digitally empowered consumer? When was the last time you were introduced to a new brand purely on social media? Has there been any new brand that has reached & influenced customers purely on social/ mobile media? What are the factors in the New Age customers' decision cycle that can be influenced by through brand building exercise? How to brand in the new age media?

In the knowledge economy the buyer is empowered and influenced by information on web 3.0 accessible through mobiles and clouds. Can content/ context branding reach & influence the buying decisions in the knowledge economy?

Rethinking the role of new age technologies - Social, Mobility, Analytics & Cloud - in the consumers' life might just have the answer to all those questions. The hint lies in Lean Consumption - which is about applying new age technologies to the customers' consumption cycle to make the buying process more efficient for the customers.