Can we please dump the word ‘consumer’?
At first this didn’t bother me as much, but lately I’m realizing that we really need to drop the word ‘consumer’ from our promotional vocabulary. I think most marketers equate ‘consumers’ as being ’statistics’, and we need to get away from thinking of them as numbers, and look at them as what they are, people. In fact the truly enlightened marketers will view them as PARTNERS, but I’ll take what I can get.
In fact, I’m dropping the term ‘consumer-generated content’(CGC) from my vocabulary as well. From now on, it’s ‘community-generated content’, which is more accurate anyway. I read something recently that most advertisers were so excited about most of the country getting high-speed internet because it would be a way to shove more ads down the pipe, and they never considered that it might be a way for the community(see I wanted to type ‘consumers’ there, it takes some getting used to) to UPLOAD more stuff, ie CGC. That’s why download speeds went through the roof, but upload speeds were usually only a few times faster than a 56K modem.
So marketers, advertisers, listen up: You are no longer selling/promoting your products/selves to consumers, you are targetting THE COMMUNITY. Trust me, the sooner we all stop thinking of the person that we are selling to as a number on a balance sheet that consumes all and provides nothing, the better off EVERYONE will be.
And what’s the best way to target the community, by joining them, of course! See how it all starts to fit together?
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I’m preferential to the term ’soylent media’. When someone asks what soylent media is, I get a chance to do my best Heston impersonation, ‘Soylent Media is made from people!!!’
The problem isn’t the term used, but the underlying view. Community is a good term, and exactly what we should aim towards. But the same people who use ‘consumer’ in a manner we find distasteful will define a community as ‘a group of people to be marketed to’ and slowly sully that term.
“The problem isn’t the term used, but the underlying view. Community is a good term, and exactly what we should aim towards. But the same people who use ‘consumer’ in a manner we find distasteful will define a community as ‘a group of people to be marketed to’ and slowly sully that term.”
They will, but in the end it doesn’t matter, they are dinosaurs that will starve to death because they are still stuck trying to market TO the community, while their smarter competitors are busy marketing WITH the community.
The smarter ones will change their views as they change the terms. The ones that don’t, will get what they deserve.
My problem with consumer is that it creates the impression that the primary activity of the target audience is buying shit. And while we do tend to buy a lot of shit, we do have other hobbies…like working, hanging, vegging, sleeping, caring, talking, blogging, hunting, fishing, fucking, laughing, crying, and countless other verbs. The marketer that doesn’t acknowledge the whole being will cause their company much suffering. I prefer to think of the audience as prospects. It’s not perfect, but at least it implies that we still need to win them over. Which is why we all have jobs.
I still like ‘target’.
We need more military and violent metaphors in our business!
Target, campaign and execution are not sufficient.
I was reading a document in order to make the changes needed for use with graduate-level folks in health care and Social Work in Sri Lanka, when I found we were using “consumers” where we used to use “patients” or people and I thought - thsi is wrong. These folks are hardly ‘consuming’: what little care is available, they have little choice in accessing, yet one doesn’t want to portray a ‘charity’ or receiving, power-less view either. So what are they? In many of the usages, I found I could substitute “community’, but in others it didn’t work. participant has a nice active, involed ring to it when it can be used, but maybe I will find ‘people’ or ‘person’ to be the most authentic,