Hello customer, good riddance consumer!

Consume: that’s what unthinking farm animals do, feeding at the trough. Consumption: that’s what they used to call cancer. Neither image is particularly appealing, is it?

Being a passive, force-fed consumer is so 20th century. It’s what “command and control” marketing was all about: a quiet contempt for those ignorant, easily manipulated masses. With the right ad agency and enough money, you could stuff almost anything down their bovine throats.

I remember a cartoon strip I saw in the 1990s, making a joke about how mass-production had become mass-consumption: consumers had replaced widgets on the production line. Too true.

Well, thanks to the Internet, the 21^st century is already proving to be very different. No more passive consumers. Today it’s all about being a customer – no matter whether that is a business customer or a Joe Public customer. It’s all merging together as the old, lazy labels and demographics (horrible word) fade into memory. The Internet is levelling the playing field as a maze of new marketplaces spring up. Instead of yesteryear’s marketers and consumers (invariably referred to as “she”!) today we see simply buyers and sellers, a la eBay, who need to be brought together on an equal footing.

Hence the name of this blog and why I will do my level best from now on to banish the word consumer, with all its nasty connotations.

The equation is simple: You are a seller; I am a buyer. You want my custom; I am your customer.