I agree in principle with everything he says… at least in this video.
[facebook_video url =”https://www.facebook.com/anonews.co/videos/1289085354436354/”]
Here’s the challenge as I see it – for marketers and consumers:
If you simply don’t buy a product because you know the company (for instance) pollutes during their manufacturing process, the company doesn’t *know* that’s why you’re not buying. They’ll assume it’s because their latest marketing campaign was no good, or the color on the package was suboptimal.
Sure, over time, if they keep trying new ads and new packaging and still sales fall, they’ll look for something else.
But how long would it be before they finally thought “let’s invest millions or billions of dollars changing our manufacturing technology, and then invest millions or billions in a marketing campaign to assure our customers know we’ve done that, *just to test* if that’s why people aren’t buying our crap?” Decades.
That’s a very slow way to turn that ship around. That’s why it’s *not enough* to just stop buying. If you want that to impact the way they do business, you have to *tell them* that’s why you’ve stopped buying.
And the interweb, and social media in particular, has given us a platform to amplify and organize that message like never before.
To that end, you also need to *reward* the good companies by letting them know why you appreciate them.
That’s why companies are more and more depending on social listening to do reputation management, brand building, and to a degree, organic product research.
Companies – the smart ones – are listening. Don’t just ‘talk with your dollars’ — make sure they’re hearing you.