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Putting Customers in Charge

May 8th, 2009

I first met Doc Searls when he was advising a panel of speakers at a conference that the long-used metaphors of using war tactics by advertisers against customers was wrong. The advertising industry speaks in terms of slaughtering the competition, capturing and owning customers, and launching new campaigns to gain ground. Searls suggested that instead of fighting, we should be encouraging conversations with our customers, and that the marketplace was one large conversation. For example, if we (customers) loved something, it would sell well. Conversely, if we didn’t, that good or service would not meet with such success.

Ten years ago, Doc and others wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. This book has ignited a conversation among certain people on all sides of the market (stores, advertisers, software and applications developers, and customers) that are now open to exploring how this might work. There’s a lot to discover!

Recently Searls has been energizing a conversation which was dubbed VRM. There’s more about it at ProjectVRM. At its heart, this is about putting customers and users in charge of everything that affects them. Watch this video for a better idea of what he means.

Coaching moment: What would it mean to you if a company that you cared about asked for your opinion? If you asked them to remove all of the data that they stored about you–and they said OK–what would you think of that? There are proposals currently being discussed, and tools being created, to allow you to control (store, allow selective access to) all of your own data. Are you interested in exploring and controlling information about yourself? Not all can be controlled, but much can!

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