So says PepsiCo’s Frank Cooper III, chief consumer engagement officer, who tells marketers that traditional advertising methods are outdated and risk turning off your best customers. Instead, PepsiCo sees a new approach in letting customers talk, share, suggest, and even tell you where you could improve. It’s where fellow consumers can gain insight and make their purchase decisions. Cut this conversation off at your peril.

Cooper’s latest call-to-arms is part of a column he wrote for The Huffington Post. He puts it bluntly that a more social approach to marketing is a more profitable approach:

At PepsiCo, we found that our consumers’ social relationships serve as the foundation for our most effective marketing. Once you engage your loyal consumers to help lead the evolution of your brand or products, those consumers communicate authentically within their real-life social networks about the meaning of your brands and the reasons others should love them too. The collaboration and innovation led by consumers will lead to word-of-mouth communications, which can influence revenue and profit.

PepsiCo has been something of a rebel pushing fellow marketers to adopt social media, not just as a bolt-on advertising channel, but as a philosophy to build a more responsive, nimble company. In February, Cooper chastised his peers, imploring them not to talk down to customers, but rather to engage them, challenge them.

To be sure, PepsiCo is walking the walk on this. A number of PepsiCo brands have been using social media extensively in their their outreach marketing: Doritos, with user-generated commercials on their YouTube channel; Mountain Dew, with their Dewmocracy “campaign”; and Pepsi’s own Pepsi Refresh project, essentially a contest for who can come up with the best idea that “will have a positive impact” on the planet.

PepsiCo’s Bonin Bough told us earlier this year that even though the Refresh Project has been called the biggest ever social media campaign of its kind, he bristles at these words. “The Refresh Project is not a social media project,” Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo, said. “Social media happens to be one of the communication channels at the heart of this social engagement effort. It is the mechanism we are using to demonstrate the power of the individual, and individual ideas.”

Editor’s Note: PepsiCo’s B. Bonin Bough will be speaking at the Social Media Conference, June 22. Join our LinkedIn Group today and qualify for a nice discount.