Aside from the obvious, the opportunity of opening this morning's Brand Marketers Summit in Kohler, Wisconsin, GE Healthcare Global Digital Marketing Leader Bob Rinderle said, "It's a pretty big day."

The Brand Marketing Summit chair and moderator of the current panel suggested that it might be fun to take a classic new product intro debacle - the rollout of New Coke, which initially replaced Classic Coke, to a great deal of consumer outrage and backlash - and recreate it in the current social media environment.

Buddy Group Chief Creative Officer Bryan Boettger just explained to Brand Marketers Summit attendees how focus groups, and even "recommendation engines" have been around as long as, well, people have been around.

The "Role Of Online Conversations In Shaping The Brand" panel that Cathy Taylor is moderating at the Brand Marketers Summit started off with an important question, which is how is social media listening impacting traditional focus group testing of products and campaigns. Buddy Group Chief Creative Officer Bryan Boettger kicked things off by saying he's no big fan of focus groups, but nonetheless still uses them - normally at the early, "iterative" stages of developing products or campaigns or design interfaces."

In the most literal of senses. That's what Orabrush social media strategist Austin Craig has been presenting at the Brand Marketers Summit. Go to YouTube if you want to see some of the hilarious videos, and socially produced ones too, but the product success story is a great case study of how great humor, video and a good product can overcome any odds - even getting distributed into Walmart.

When Dr. Bob, inventor of tongue-cleaning devices Orabrush, developed the breakthrough oral hygiene product, he couldn't figure out why no one would buy it. Not retailers who failed to stock it, and not consumers, when they actually did put it on their shelves.

Lenovo marketing chief Gary Milner says the roll of email has changed dramatically for big brand marketers, especially depending n the audiences they are targeting.

Before you get the wrong idea, Lenovo Global Marketing Director-Digital Marketing Gary Milner was not alluding to the kind of waste management business that, say a Tony Soprano, might run. He was talking about media waste - the kind that all marketers increasingly are having t deal with - if they want to stay in any kind of business.

Explaining how much agency services are changing for marketers in a digital age, Valspar Paint Vice President of Marketing John Anton said more often than not, the PR firm, not the traditional ad agency is driving the branding train.

Well, actually, he's had a few of them since checking in to the American Club, the site of the Brand Marketers Summit in Kohler, Wisconsin this week.