Amazon provides a service to its existing customers by helping them stay on top of Stephen King's growing repertoire and the official DVD release date of Gosford Park. It does not spam. It serves. And that makes all the difference in a world where the typical consumer receives 210 private email messages each month and trashes nearly every piece of digital marketing that he receives.

"Email will drop as an acquisition tool, but it will become an important loyalty tool -- a way to keep customer relationships growing deeper," she says. "If a brand holds up its end of the bargain by delivering value to its customers, those people will throw open their mailboxes. I think the power of email is still very much untapped."

Broken Promises

Since September 11, distrust has dominated the travels, investments, and business interactions of most consumers. And woe is the company that gains a customer's confidence and then betrays it by designing a bad product, releasing an offensive commercial, or shredding a truckload of evidence. Trust is the new currency -- and no one is buying.

"More than anything, consumers believe they have to take to responsibility for their own choices and their own lives," Coots says. "The want to be as informed as possible. And they are hypervigilant about the choices they make."

That means a brand must deliver on all of its promises all the time and never forsake the identity that consumers know and trust.

Coots says Saturn Corp. understood that rule when it introduced itself as a different kind of car company a decade ago. In its advertisements and at its dealerships, Saturn vowed to revolutionize the auto industry. Remember the lovable mooch who hopscotched from one Saturn service center to the next to take advantage of free doughnuts and free checkups on his car? What about Judith Reusswig, the anxious owner who mailed a snapshot to Saturn so that assembly-line workers would make the perfect Saturn just for her?

"Those commercials wouldn't have worked if Saturn hadn't followed through with results," Coots says. "There is no room for disconnect between a brand and its pledge," Coots says. "It is intolerable. It is unacceptable."

Anni Layne Rodgers (arodgers@fastcompany.com) is the Fast Company senior Web editor. Learn more about Laurie Coots on the Web.

Sidebar: The TiVo Effect

Digital video recorders fundamentally change the way people view -- and use -- television. Services like TiVo transfer control from the networks to the viewers and render the 30-second ad spot powerless.

"As more people subscribe to TiVo, you'll see more efforts to have brand character portrayed appropriately in programming," Coots says. "I'm not talking about obvious product placement. I'm talking about infiltrating the story line.

"Think about the role FedEx played in Cast Away. Basically, Tom Hanks starred in that movie alongside a parcel company. The movie portrayed FedEx values by showing how hard it looked for him, how well it treated his family, and so forth."

Television shows like All My Children have already begun to introduce real brands as real characters with personality and purpose. Coots expects that trend to continue to the point where Homer Simpson will someday purchase cases of Budweiser and Krispy Kremes at Apu's 7-Eleven.

"I don't think advertising is dead," she says. "But I do think that new, meaningful connections between brands and consumers will become an essential part of the equation."