Mike Stopforth

Ok, here it is on a platter:

Your customers are advertising-immune. Message-deaf. Surprisingly smart.

The vast majority of those we classify as consumers (and we’re all consumers on some level), have innoculated themselves against the overwhelming barrage of marketing messages, sales pitches and advertising slants we fire at them on an hourly, nevermind daily basis.

As corporations grow bigger, consumers get smaller. I hear it bellowed from boardroom tables everywhere - “we’re customer-centric“. I quoted from Business 2.0 magazine in my previous post, and it’s worth mentioning here again - “They’ve (we’ve) long said the customer is always right. But they never really meant it. Now they have no choice.”

The ever widening chasm between craftsman and customer is propogating a whole truckload of pissed-off people. We know this, and typically, we sweep the fact under the carpet. Or we ‘handle’ complaints through a nicely controlled call center, or provide a complaints email address. But we still believe that our customers are generally wrong, stupid and homogenous. Problem is, those are the same people we bank on to pay our salaries at the end of the month.

Don’t believe me?

When last did you put down the phone on a telesales consultant before they had a chance to tell you why they phoned? How often do you switch between radio or television stations when the ads come on? Can you name or even remember more than one or two branded billboards that passed you on the highway this morning? Get the picture? You too are voluntarily immune…

But I bet you expect your customers to act differently. I bet you pay advertising agencies thousands and even millions to produce campaigns that you yourself would ignore.

I stood up in front of an SAB management team the other day and announced (stupidly) that I drink Windhoek Lager (an opposing product). But the point of the suicidal statement was illustrating clearly that my choice to drink Windhoek over say Castle or Black Label had nothing to do with the price of the beer, the quality of the ads, or even the taste (I guarantee 95% of beer drinkers would fail a blind taste test). I choose Windhoek because I trust the person who referred me to it. I continue to drink it because my social network enjoys it more than any SA product. The power of word of mouth…

So, what have we got? A perfect storm of societal and technological evolutions is giving birth to a New Breed of Consumer. Citizens that participate, involve themselves in your business and demand attention, engagment and authentic, transparent trade. Or risk them telling the connected world about your stuff ups.

Knowing that, are you still a customer-centric organisation?