MUMBAI: There was a time when if you wanted to reach out to customers, you put an ad in a newspaper or on television and bang you would witness product offtake. Well, no more. Thanks to the noise in the media, messages often cannot be heard in the din. That's a problem marketers internationally - in more crowded markets than India - have been seeking to solve.

Multinational packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble, apparently, believes it has found a solution around this. At least in the US.

The 13 to 19 year olds who constitute Tremor are not paid a penny for doing what they do. According to the Tremor website all they have to do is:
* Receive exclusive stuff for themselves and their friends like inside information, coupons, samples, unreleased music, and discounts sent online and to their home.
* Influence companies by providing their feedback on new products and ideas.
* Improve their college applications and resume by referencing their Tremor membership to show they have first-hand experience at marketing products and ideas through word-of-mouth campaigns.
* Meet Tremor Members at Tremor.com. Members can find other Tremor teens with interests like theirs and discover members who live across the country. They connect with each other over Internet messengers.

In return, Tremor members have to help create exciting marketing programs and share them with friends by:
* Sharing their opinions and feedback when they receive new ideas to rate online. Tremor shares their feedback directly with its clients.
* Spreading the word to their friends… if members think the Tremor program is worth talking about. In effect, members create their own word-of-mouth marketing campaigns.
* Participating in programs sent to their home. This usually involves trying out a new product sample, reading through inside scoop, providing feedback at a website, etc.
* Staying up-to-date with Tremor by visiting Tremor.com once a week.

Four Tremor Members were pictured on the cover of the 2 February, 2004 subscriber's issue of the Forbes magazine.

In simple terms what Tremor members have to do is propagate information about brands at home, in the school and in other places that companies have difficulties in reaching. So you have kids who become local brand ambassadors for products in canteens or at night parties or through SMS and the Internet.

The Tremor members are approached about twice a month for feedback on products, from both P&G and partners, in exchange for a sneak peak at new products and chances to win prizes like gift certificates. The teens are then urged to spread the word to their friends.

P&G says it draws a distinction between all teens. There are the trendsetters (the first to embrace new fashions, products or ideas) and the trend spreaders or "connectors. The latter, says P&G, are the 10 per cent of the teen population who have unbelievable social networks and a propensity to share information about products with friends. And it is these kids who majorily make up Tremor.

Tremor's service has found custom, and has run more than 15 campaigns in 2003 for products as varied as movies and motor oil. Among these are AOL, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and Toyota Motor.

With success. Take for example the teen TV show, which was slipping in the ratings. A script was sent out giving Tremorites an early glimpse of an upcoming episode, and enough teens heard about it and tuned in to watch. The show's ratings went from 5.6 to a 15.2 share.

In fact, P&G's global marketing officer James Stengel was bold enough to tell Forbes that "the mass-marketing model is dead… this is the future."

Are Indian companies tuned in?