There is no quick path to success in the new era of customer engagement. Progress is likely to come incrementally—by listening to customers, making adjustments to engagement strategies, and learning through trial and error. Since diverse perspectives will be essential to mastering this new landscape, McKinsey’s Luke Collins, Tom French, and Paul Magill recently sought out three practitioners with very different vantage points on marketing’s future.

Virgin Atlantic Airways CEO Steve Ridgway talks about how his company recently has been pushing the boundaries of collaborating with customers, while experiencing the pleasant surprise of a successful mass-media campaign. American Express CMO John Hayes discusses what today’s “marketing revolution” means and describes some of the organizational steps he has taken to get ahead of it. Duncan Watts, principal research scientist of the Human Social Dynamics group at Yahoo! Research, explains how today’s data-rich environment exposes the limits of intuition in marketing and the need to take a scientific approach to understanding consumers. A summary of those conversations follows.

THE CEO: VIRGIN ATLANTIC AIRWAYS’ STEVE RIDGWAY Steve Ridgway has been the CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airways since 2001. A native of England, he joined Virgin in 1990. Previously, he served as executive director...