This is not one of those antagonistic blog posts, designed to fire up the PRs or traditional journos – it’s not even a blog post about PR, journalism, social media, or any of my core subjects.
It’s about how we consume. How we consume information, products – and how it consumes us.
Take, for example, loyalty cards – the bane of every supermarket shopper.
Unless, of course, you value the 20p for every £2K spent bonus you get from Tescos for religiously and blindly investing your monthly food budget with them and them alone.
It could, of course, be Sainsburys, Waitrose, M&S – they’re all the same loyalty schemes, just with different cards and incentives for you to part with your cash.
You are giving them something far more valuable than your cash when you swipe the loyalty card, though – your shopping information, habits, purchases, times and place of purchase, special offers, preferred Brand buys.
You’re giving it all away.
And on the promise of ‘extra points’ here and ‘savings on petrol’ there. How can you be SO brainwashed?
It’s simple, really – you give the Marketing Department of the supermarket everything they want to know, for the promise of a few goodies and reductions/special offers. In return they sell you more targeted stuff. So they don’t have to invent new and exciting ways to attract your hard-earned cash.
You believe they are giving you something useful, and you trade it off as loyalty.
Why not be a dangerous consumer? Don’t have a loyalty card. The benefits are negligible anyway, given how much you’re spending over the entire year – and you know I’m right. Forget Brand loyalty, shop where you want, when you want.
Dangerous consuming also works outside of the supermarkets, too: consider the implications online.
We’re already dangerous consumers when it comes to sourcing our News content. No loyalty, or very little, exists.
We source it when we want it, from the places we want it. No incentives or loyalty schemes will work, because it’s available in so many places.
So, the next time they swipe your card, and you get six pence for your £149 shop, ask yourself if your loyalty can be gained so easily – after all, you wouldn’t give it away so easily online, would you? Or would you?
What would make you ‘loyal’ to a News-providing site, by the way? I’d be interested to know what would turn a Dangerous Consumer into a committed fan. Or is online News destined to be always seen as a disposable internet asset.
