• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 11:59 AM

Rather than hire a gaggle consultants or some boutique ad agency, top CPG brands are going directly to young consumers to learn about this thing they call Twitter. Among other brands, Sprint Nextel, Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"The partnerships are emerging as businesses are scurrying to bolster their ability to engage with their customers on the Web by using Facebook, Twitter and the like," The Journal writes. Sure, marketers have long relied on universities to conduct research relevant to their businesses. So-called "soft" social sciences, however, have never received such interest, according to longtime IBM executive Irving Wladawsky-Berger. "Now, computer science is increasingly employed in the study of human behavior and shopping habits," writes The Journal. Says Wladawsky-Berger: "What is new is we can extend science to marketing,"

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »