• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 15, 2012

Sandra Lopez, Global Marketing Strategy Director for New Business, Intel, just gave me a new perspective on the way to utilize social media as part of marketing strategy: First-mover intelligence.

Speaking on the opening panel at OMMA Social in New York this morning, Lopez gave the example of how Intel utilized social media to “drive conversations” between Intel’s engineers and its constituents in the IT community to understand what their issues and needs are vis a vis the kind of technology that Intel develops.

Lopez said the insights gleaned from those social media conversations led to innovative product development and tweaks that would normally have taken as much as two years to get out of the traditional marketing focus groups process.

“It’s not only about driving the conversations, but also picking up insights in terms of what do customers really need,” she said, noting that marketing doesn’t just relate to marketing strategy now, but to an enterprise’s overall “innovation.”