In the future, connection may be more important than products

November 24th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson in Biz, social media

Image Credit: miamiamia

This past weekend, my wife’s grandmother passed away. Sitting in an intensive care waiting room I did what any other person in need of an escape would do—I started Tweeting.

Mostly it was a way to distract myself, but being on Twitter was far more valuable to me than grabbing a magazine or watching TV.

The reason? Human connection.

The social shift

When the internet was born, the availability of products at good prices is what drove commerce. Think of the Amazon empire—a store smart enough to provide you with personalized recommendations for products you’d probably like. For Amazon, product is king.

Sure, you can argue that customer reviews and discussions are important for Amazon.

But the fact remains that I will trust one review from a friend over fifteen reviews from strangers. In a world where “friend” has an ever-expanding definition, companies are scrambling to fill that role. And even if they don’t earn our friendship, they’re at least looking for our attention.

The present battle for attention

As Brain Solis recently posted,

Access to free and expansive media platforms and distribution channels has democratized influence and shifted the power of authority from those who previously controlled the media to those who disseminate it.

Attention has become a precious commodity as it becomes increasingly elusive and diverted. [...] As consumers, we are starting to fathom that our attention is valuable.

I believe Solis is right when he says that there’s an awakening happening regarding the power of our attention, but I don’t think we’ve yet fully democratized influence and shifted authority because we haven’t yet realized the full power of our attention.

Power, Democracy and Limiting Choice

We may have democratized the means of content distribution, but the practice of commerce isn’t yet democratized. Corporations still have too much power to limit our choices (if you’re familiar with poststructural philosophy, I’m suggesting that organizations still act as the centered and sovereign subject that limits freedom and play).

Harvard’s ProjectVRM outlines this well:

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, large companies have been working to “capture” and “lock” customers inside what we today call “silos” and “walled gardens.” These are the private habitats where customer choices are limited to what the vendor alone can provide. “Relationships” with customers in these habitats are maintained entirely on the vendor’s terms, through Customer Relationship Management” systems (CRMs) that work to milk as much money as possible out of customers by limiting rather than liberating customer choices.

But really, how companies interact with their customers through the social networks is somewhat of an extension of the industrial mindset. The goal of the company/consumer relationship in our current scenario is not to open up choice, but to control choice through the guise of relationships.

It’s time we face the fact that many new social media “relationships” with customers aren’t really established for the good of the customer; they’re established to serve organizations.

Relationships will shift from best practices to necessity

As soon as we (consumers) realize that the power of commerce belongs to us and not to the companies that so desperately want to friend us, our entire mode of doing business will change. If you look around, you’ll see that the revolution has already started. As Matt Singley recently wrote:

We don’t just want the ability to share your products and services with our friends and others within our sphere of influence; we expect it.

I think what’s most important about Singley’s observation is that companies must realize that a time is coming when they will no longer be able to define interaction on their terms.

Imagine a business environment in which advertising works in reverse: where customers broadcast what they want and companies respond with relevant offers.

In this model what matters is not only the product that’s being sold, but the connection that sellers have to their customers.

When customers have all the power of choice, connection and transparent relationships will not be “best practices,” they will be as basic and essential as offering quality products.

This is the heart of the coming intention economy.

What do you think?

Do you think the value of connection will equal or surpass the value of products? I’d love to start a conversation.

-Andrew

Image Credit: miamiamia on Stock Exchange; original here

Tags: connection, Customer Relationships, future, social media

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Jason Markow

Whenever I hear the notion of "Advertising in Reverse" I can think of no greater example than http://shirt.woot.com On this site: customers vote on the shirt they want (read:broadcast what they want) and the website respond with relevant quantity. The shirts that go up for sale after a "derby" (designs submitted by the community competing against one another) are the exact product the community wanted as well as created. It is examples of sites like this and perhaps etsy.com or digg.com that show me that organizations might not "act as the centered and sovereign subject that limits freedom and play" as much as you say, especially in the case where the entire function of the organization is to cultivate every possibility of freedom and play like the aforementioned sites.

It is these very platforms that also bring in the connection. To answer your question about connections surpassing products, I say: Absolutely. The reason the community exists (in these cases) is because they revolve around a product (or type of product), but the connections that form in the community (not just from sellers to customers) are far more important and valuable. It becomes hard to measure because one person may only connect to two (or even one) other person.

Does any of this make sense?

Andrew Swenson

Jason,

I really need to write another post to flesh out the centered/decentered subject analogy. But being away from my copies of Derrida's Writing and Difference, I don't think I could do it justice. So I promise more on that later.

You bring up a good point though, there are many community-centered sites already that recognize the value of shared meaning creation and the constitution and re-constitution (becoming) of product offerings based on the ebb and flow of the community. Great examples!

But I think as time goes on, we'll need to develop some kind of interoperable protocol or framework in which "advertising in reverse" works. If it's maintained to individual sites, these can easily become silos.

Doc Sealrs says on the Harvard Post:

"...sites become silos, and silos are a big part of the problem we also have with loyalty cards. All are different. All say We have ways of making you shop. Tll [sic] trap and control you in their own ways. We need something that serves as a customer’s own tool, and works as simply as a keyring, a car key, an emailing, or a text message. 'Here’s what I want: _________.' That’s it."

(the URL again: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2009/11/16/adv... )

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that in order for "advertising in reverse" to be truly decentered and democratized, the movement has to be global and not just confined to individual decentered and deomcratized companies.

I also think that in a globally decentered business environment, the scenario you suggested in your second paragraph will become the rule: "The reason the community exists (in these cases) is because they revolve around a product (or type of product), but the connections that form in the community (not just from sellers to customers) are far more important and valuable."

Wow, that's really heady for the night before Thanksgiving. Thanks for giving me a mental workout. Let's continue to move this conversation forward.

And if you think I'm full of it, please let me know =)

Have a great Thanksgiving Jason.

John Mark Troyer

Companies that sell expensive products into the enterprise often talk about "solution selling." Social media is an important part of extending this shared interest after the sale. My job, as a social media marketer, is to make sure our customers are wildly successful, get raises, and recommend our product to all their peers.

Andrew Swenson

John,

I'm familiar with solution selling. As a former B2B marketer, we thought of our jobs as "lead generation for the complex sale." In practice it was more fun than that dry title though =)

What's interesting to me is that ProjectVRM takes our solution sales CRM and turns it on it's head—giving consumers the power to do "vendor relationship management." It also places the traditional, enterprise-level RFP on the personal level (hence advertising in reverse/personal-RFP/broadcast shopping/whatever you want to call it).

In the future, I think your job as a social media marketer will be increasingly important, especially, as you state, after the sale. Our connection to our customers must continue to grow and develop after transactions. Thanks for pointing that out.

How do you see your job evolving to help your customers stay wildly successful as more and more companies hop into the social sphere?

John Mark Troyer

I'm coming from the online community side - which is mostly post-sale peer-peer help, with a good secondary use case of pre-sale due diligence. Community teams are often in the tech support department, although ours has moved to be part of our web team. So my job has actually moved *from* community *to* marketing. I think there will be convergence on the other side - many current social media marketers will have to become online community managers.

Andrew Swenson

Wow. I just looked at your post on the Enterprise Social Media Map (http://johnmarktroyer.com/2009/11/the-enterpris... ), a really valuable way of picturing all of this.

I'm going to devote some time to looking at it more deeply today, but for right now, I'll agree that there seems to be a present split in some orgs between social media marketing and community management.

I think we'd do well to remove it.

mattsingley

Love this thought of yours "...where customers broadcast what they want and companies respond with relevant offers." I don't think that is too far off. It's going to be a brutal learning curve for a lot of organizations though.

Very sorry to hear about the loss of your wife's grandmother. At the end of the day, those are the relationships that really matter, the real life ones.

Hope you and yours have a good Thanksgiving.

Andrew Swenson

Thanks Matt, but the broadcast shopping idea isn't mine.

(I included the link above, but for credit's sake, I feel like I should post it again here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2009/11/16/adv... )

I think that think the most forward-thinking organizations are already committed to grabbing hold of the learning curve and adapting to new trends, but for most, I agree the learning curve will be brutal (especially when I consider how much I learn every day...)

And to ask the question I get all the time, do you think there's legitimate danger for organizations on the bleeding edge?

bradfordshimp

Andrew, great thoughts! I agree that connection is becoming the most important thing. In many ways, its a return to our roots, where we knew the people who we bought from and they knew us. Relationship is becoming a two way street again when it comes to business.

Andrew Swenson

Thanks for commenting and the Tweets.

It's odd how we've come full circle, right?

As you've said before "The new local is not limited by geographic boundaries. The only limit is our involvement." (http://allbizanswers.com/the-world-is-local )

Thanks for bringing this up, I think to some extent your post in October is also present in this post here. Sorry I didn't make that connection until now.

bradfordshimp

Its not just my thoughts or yours. There is a real change going on. People are figuring out that they can connect using the internet. Suddenly, its a two way conversation.

Its an exciting time, where we can talk to the authors of the books we love, the owners of the businesses, etc.

Shane Mac

I remember reading @bradfordshimp 's post, http://allbizanswers.com/the-world-is-local, and thinking about how he hit a nail on the head. (I think that is how I came across you buddy). When the boundaries were the city limits back in the city slicker days, you knew who you could trust in the town and who was going to game you. The power of word of mouth and trusting your source. Then we lost that with the rapid growth and industrialization of big business in our country and grew to trust glitzy advertisements and not the people behind them. Both of you are right on the ball when you say the world is now local because the trust factor is finally brought back with the awesome technologies that we have today. I think a lot of organizations will start to have some hardships when trying to deal with the shift mainly because now if they screw over one customer, the world will know in an instant. Customer Service (or community manager) is becoming one of the key roles in business today and will probably be looked upon much differently sooner rather than later. Good post Andrew and glad I could help with a tweet or 2 during a hard time. Stay strong

Andrew Swenson

Thanks Shane.

I'm really glad to have met you and Brad, and a host of others who share similar lines of thinking.

I think social tools like Twitter and this blog have changed my life for the better. I also think that if enough of us come together we can change the face of business for the better.

Thanks for being committed to trust and integrity in business.

Now let's go kick some ass.