Here’s a message for politicians, CEOs, and marketing folks: The little people are gaining control and you’d better not forget it. The voters who are even now lining up to turn the rascals out (we leave it up to you to decide just who the rascals are), the shareholders who are demanding more say in setting CEO compensation, and the consumers pushing the food industry towards organics have one thing in common — their voice is getting louder.

Why? Because the Internet has invited everyone to voice his opinion and to energize like-minded people. A cause that hits a nerve can become a crusade overnight, whether it’s ridiculing John Kerry or bashing Wal-Mart. Talking down to your customers or voters is no longer an option, and those who do will find themselves out of office or out of customers.

This message was a central theme of a symposium on “Building an Innovative Business: The Future of Beauty” hosted last week by the Fashion Institute of Technology. The all-day conference featured numerous trendsetters in the design and consumer products world, and was sponsored byTarget (pronounced Tar-jay by those in the know).

The main thrust of the day’s program was that consumers have become part of the creative process. Now that they can offer feedback through blogs and interactiveWeb sites, they are demanding consideration and involvement as never before.

One sign of this is the outstanding success of Dove, an old product given new life by an advertising campaign that stresses “servicing the consumer” and conveys empathy for the consumer. In case you have missed it, the Dove commercials stress “real people,” and “real beauty.” The Web site presents the results of a wide-ranging survey demonstrating the near-universal selfimage issues confronted by young women and discusses how to improve their self-esteem. The tag line is “How did our idea of beauty become so distorted?”

This attitudinal change and empowerment of consumers has also found its way into the investing world. Shareholders are also demanding consideration and want to be included. We would argue that the outrage over corporate misdeeds, the desire to make proxy voting a meaningful endeavor, to have a greater hand in selecting directors and the push to make corporations better citizens has its roots in the same soil.

Whether the topic is corporate behavior, politics, fashion, theater, shopping, or travel, the Internet has rendered everyone a critic. The influence of the once silent sometimes reaches the level of the absurd. The chief creative officer of hot marketing firm IDEO, Paul Bennett, made that point by referencing an entirely tiresome video that became an astonishing Web destination. The four-minute film showed a panting, stroke-afflicted pug with an especially long and uncontrolled tongue, which quickly became such a hit that the owner made a small fortune. That’s one for the record books.

The requirement for businesses to serve their customers, and shareholders, in a more broad-based way was referenced by several of the speakers on the FIT program. The head of Kiehl’s, for instance, spoke about the many ways in which his company gives back. Whether it’s sponsoring marathons or celebrating the history of New York, the company engages with its community. The employees of the chain of skin care stores are given time off to participate in local events.

This, of course, is also part of Target’s mantra. The company gives more than 5% of pretax profits, now amounting to more than $2 million per week, to charity.

Target’s success has not come only from philanthropy, of course. The company has consistently thought outside its own box, by bringing innovative design to mass retailing, by being the first discount chain to advertise in Vogue, and in many other ways paying homage to the sophistication of today’s consumer. Having name-brand designers such as Isaac Mizrahi and most recently Behnaz Sarafpour, produce a line of clothing to be sold at Target’s price points is beyond brilliant.

For consumer products companies, the pressures created by this worldly and involved customer must be daunting. We cannot think of a product or service that is not vulnerable to rapid and profound democratization. And to technology changes.

The publisher of Cosmo Girl, Kristine Welker, demonstrated how shoppers could quickly order up products advertised in her magazine by dialing a series of numbers on a cell phone — the whole process took about two minutes. Another first.

The involvement of sophisticated consumers has a corollary in rapidly evolving competitors. An idea which takes off in part through Internet hype is also almost immediately accessible to competitors. The folks running Whole Foods have recently experienced that stress first-hand.

So the stress is on the beauty industry to innovate and to engage the buyer in novel ways. Which brings us to ingestible cosmetics, a concept we bet will be the next big thing in the beauty industry. Though there are some pills and additives out in the marketplace, the approach is new and not yet widely marketed.

Consumers today are absolutely drowning in complex-sounding products aimed at removing wrinkles or blemishes, which promise to make skin more youthful in appearance. While five years ago the clinical-looking products were novel and few, now they are bewildering.

The concept of taking a pill that improves your skin is appealing. It is the simple, natural extension of the medicinal advertising of the plethora of potions in the marketplace, and it will probably work just as well.

Here’s the exciting, and inevitable, follow-on. If consumers begin self-medicating for skin care, it will be only a matter of time before they will be demanding a greater voice in their overall health care. Even our doctors may soon have to learn how to listen.

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