Marketers see today's consumers as web-savvy, mobile-enabled data sifters who pounce on whichever brand or store offers the best deal. In response, they've ramped up their interactions with customers. But for many consumers, the rising volume of marketing messages isn't empowering--it's overwhelming. Rather than pulling customers into the fold, marketers are pushing them away with relentless and ill-conceived efforts to engage. What do consumers want from marketers? Simplicity. After surveying thousands of consumers and interviewing hundreds of marketers and other executives, the authors find that the single biggest driver of customer "stickiness" is the ease with which consumers can gather information about a product and confidently and efficiently sort through their available choices. They offer three tactics marketers can use to simplify consumers' decision making and help them navigate the purchase journey. Companies should minimize the number of information sources consumers must touch as they move confidently toward a purchase. They should provide trustworthy sources of product information and recommendations. And they should offer tools that will help consumers weigh their options by identifying the product features that are most relevant to them. Companies that avoid bombarding customers and instead focus on simplifying consumers' decision making will rise above the din, and their customers will stick by them as a result.

Social technologies are helping-if not forcing-marketers to form new kinds of relationships with customers. But traditional brand management models don't account for these new kinds of interactions between companies and consumers. Brand marketers need to update their models to include "new-media ringmasters"-digitally savvy executives who move fast, understand how to integrate social media into corporate communications, and can organize cross-functional teams.