Renee Hopkins Callahan has a nice editorial post at Corante pulling together some ideas kicked off by Elizabeth Albrecht, who suggested that marketers could place less emphasis on flawless promo materials:

Now, with the advent of cheaper and more accessible production methods maybe, therefore, our collateral doesn't have to be perfect any more. Maybe we can take more risks. Maybe throw out more ideas, enable others to comment and contribute.

In talking about our strategies, joint marketing, targets, etc. we came to the realization that one of our biggest issues is ahem our own perfectionism....Yet, in today's Web 2.0 world it's okay (even cool) to throw things out to the market that are a little rough around the edges. One of the terrific benefits of doing business on the Web is the interaction and community.

In fact, perfectionism could be seen as killing engagement, attempting to deny the reader the opportunity to share in the meaning-making. Perhaps it goes with an Intelligent Design model of how the world works: the genius creator is totally responsible for the result, instead of seeing (the Evolutionist viewpoint) that all progress is the result of mutations, the hit and miss of trying stuff out and sometimes making mistakes.

UPDATE: Antony Mayfield uses a nice analogy in his riff on this post, as well as the appealing title of unpasteurised marketing.

Dealing, then, with a greater volume of communications content, produced more quickly than it has been before, with necessarily "rougher edges" will have the added benefit being less pasteurised. To get a bit geeky for a moment, it means that marketing content will need to be in a perpetual beta mode.