In December last year Time magazine voted You as the person of the year. (Incidentally, there is a natty website where you can reproduce the Time cover with a photo of your choice.) This was quickly followed in January by Advertising Age also voting the Consumer as the agency of the year.
It is tempting to dismiss the media and in particular, the advertising media as just being followers of fashion; because everything to do with customers IS fashionable at the moment. But that would be a mistake. Underneath the customer-hype are significant changes to the role that customers will play in value creation in the future.
Some of these changes are already here, for example, micro-targeting of customers by massively data-rich companies, some are being tested, for example, involving lead-customers in innovation, or involving influential customers in evangelising to their networks of family & friends, and some are yet to work through, for example, adaptive micro-branding to sub-segments of customers that keeps pace with each segments’ evolution.
No doubt you will be hearing much more about these over the coming weeks and months. Perhaps the customer will at last ascend to their rightful place on the throne.
What do you think?
Add a comment and lets get CRMGuru2.0 buzzing.
Graham Hill
