There was a lot to like at the Retail Connections Business Executive Summit at the Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort in Florida. We heard interesting conversation about mobile and social — including a surprising number of skeptics on the potential return, or even endurance of mobile (in other words — fad or new reality?), and good talk on IT Governance (more on that in a future article). But perhaps for me the most interesting session was a presentation by Tory Burch CMO, Miki Beradelli on how Tory Burch the designer and Tory Burch the company use social media to win the race to relevance.

We need to have a little separation here between Tory Burch the designer, and Tory Burch the company. Even though Miki would argue there is no difference, in fact, the vehicles used by the company to build the brand are slightly different than the vehicles used by the designer.

One vehicle that Tory Burch the designer uses is Twitter. She uses it to validate her ideas, or co-create products her customers really do want to buy. Miki gave us a great example, which I will paraphrase (and hopefully do justice). As she was going through airport security one day in 2010, Tory had to take off her shoes, just like the rest of us do. She tweeted something to the effect of “Is it me or is everyone grossed out by having to go barefoot through airport security? Should I design a line of travel socks? “ The response she received was overwhelming. Of course it is true that some airports do provide little blue hospital socks for those who are troubled by walking barefoot through the body scanner, but these are few and far between, and the socks themselves not so interesting. And this is the Tory Burch customer. So, by holiday season 2010, Tory Burch launched the travel sock, complete with no-slip soles. Perhaps you have to be a bit high-end to think of $48 socks for stocking stuffers, but in fact, that’s Tory’s customer. And sales have been brisk.

Tory Burch isn’t the only brand manager I’ve heard using Twitter for this purpose. Kim Kardashian actually did something similar to decide which shade of pink to use on her perfume package. You can’t exactly call either of these examples Wisdom of the crowd as much as co-creation of a product. And the thing about being the co-creator of a product is, you get invested in it. And so of COURSE you want to buy it. You helped design it, after all. I just think that’s fascinating.

Then there’s Tory Burch the company. Apparently Facebook is a more appropriate vehicle for the company. I confess I had never visited Tory’s FB page before sitting down to write this article, and I also have to confess when I got to it I was blown away. It might be more accurate to say that Facebook is where Tory Burch the designer and Tory Burch the company meet. It’s pretty much like an external web site, but also includes all the likes, photos, affinities, and other options available to FB users. The only downside isn’t the fault of the company — Facebook tends to get overloaded, and videos really loaded slowly.

There’s an upshot to all of this…and that is around the subject of ROI. Ms. Beradelli used to think their existing analysis tools could measure ROI of these types of initiatives. Perhaps on the travel socks, you can measure a return. But the Facebook page is harder to quantify. In the end, she’s created a hierarchy of brand equity that I really found compelling: there’s branding/marketing that you own, branding that you buy, and branding that you EARN. You own your web site. It’s your marketing vehicle and unless you get hacked, no one is going to take it away from you. You buy advertising. When I see an ad in Vanity Fair for Tory Burch products, I know that it was bought with an advertising budget. But what is the marketing/brand equity that you get from 122,162 Facebook followers? What kind of brand equity do you get when your Twitter followers help you co-create a product? That equity is earned. It may be hard to measure by traditional means, but it clearly (to borrow a phrase from IBM) turns shoppers into advocates. No amount of money can buy an advocate. It takes conversation to make that happen.

And that comes to the last thought-provoking comment Ms. Beradelli made. She looked up the definition of channel in an on-line dictionary. The definitions tend to indicate a one-directional flow. Her belief (and I tend to agree) is that we are moving beyond channels. All flow is two-way. All interaction is a conversation. We may not be there 100% today, but we’re going to be there very soon.

All this was really great stuff. If you think social media is going away — think again. If you think mobility is a fad…well, it really isn’t. That doesn’t mean basic business rules have stopped applying. We need more quantifiable use cases like the travel sock. And we need better ways to measure awareness of our brands. And the intestinal fortitude to experiment from time to time.

And yes, I’d love a pair of travel socks for Christmas next year!