Ten Ways ‘Customer’ is the wrong frame for #CustomerCommons

Some founders of the Customer Commons have an emotional investment in the use of the word “Customer.” I believe we can do better.

Here’s why we should try.

Customer is the wrong frame, invoking the wrong preconceptions.

‘Customer’ is akin to ‘consumer’: weak, disadvantaged, requiring protection. The person behind the counter has power, the customer lines up with all the other customers waiting their turn. We should invoke strength and power. ‘Warrior Commons’ might be overstepping but that’s the right direction.

A ‘Customer’ is merely a node in a network; the real juice is in the connections among the nodes (relationships) and the topology of the network (clusters, intermediaries, proximity, flexibility). Our true focus has been on how to help people use the network to their advantage. If this were television, ‘customer’ is like a passive ‘viewer’ in the creative YouTube and Ustream era.

‘Customers’ can only buy/not-buy. We’re creating a world where people’s relationships give them more power and more active choices like collective action, bargaining, trading non-cash behavior for non-cash benefits.

 

‘Customer’ limits relationships to the lifespan of commerce. Our relationships are multilayered, longer.

‘Customer’ says commerce, cash, and money is the measure of a relationship. That is only true sometimes. For example…

• ‘Customer’ ignores Person-to-Person relationships. Children aren’t their parent’s customers.
• ‘Customer’ misses government-citizen relationships. Citizens aren’t customers.
• ‘Customer’ leaves out student-teacher-school relationships. Students aren’t customers. Employees aren’t customers.
• I don’t want to use tools built for ‘Customer’ to flirt. I’m a man, not a wallet.
• ‘Customer’ excludes NGOs. I am not my congregation’s customer.

Finally, this is not how I want to identify with our project.

‘Customer’ is the slave name given to people by marketers and the people who pay them.

I reject it.

So what is the path forward?

The relationship.

The vector, not the node. Interpersonal relationships and person-to-institution relationships, perhaps even institution-to-institution relationships (Persona LLC, anyone?).

Relationship Commons.

Connection Commons.

Interaction Commons.

Engagement Commons.

Just focus on the ties connecting people and we should be great.

My two cents.

Transformers on Immigration Reform [spoilers]

Transformers is a great summer action flick. I saw it Monday night at a sold out 11pm showing. Its US immigration policy subtext is not so subtle. [spoilers]

– Part 1 – The Evil Alien Invasion –

Aliens show up.

No passport. No visa. No border patrol. Just falling from the sky. 

Bad aliens that kill people, attacking American soldiers, breaching security. They are here to destroy our lives.

They look strange. They hide among us, online and off, often in plain site. Walking down the road, is that a car or a killer? A Nokia N93 or a fire spitting monster?

Easy movie making: a few minutes of slithering, exploding violence set up the first wave of aliens as bad guys. Prime the xenophobic pump.

– Part 2 – The Nice Aliens –

Good aliens show up. Only a handful.

You get to know them as people, as individuals. They wear bright colors, apologize for stepping on the grass, exercise restraint, crack jokes. Some have trouble speaking English but connect through pop culture. They wear all-American GM trademarks.

They help our hero get the girl.

And these good aliens serve with the U.S. Army, earning the right to stay when the war is over.

Harder movie making: at least half the film spent defining characters, relationships, showing the humanity behind alien masks.

– Part 3 – Humans Respond –

At first all aliens look alike, are treated as bad guys. We see good guys captured, threatened, held without warrant, and tortured.

Only when humans personally intervene, risking their freedom for alien friends, are the good aliens freed to fight the bad aliens.

Even then, the good aliens are forced to hide their true natures, to stay in American costume, to assimilate.

– Part 4 – Themes –

Explicit Good fighting Explicit Evil. (The movie’s marketing emphasis.)

Appearances can be deceiving.

Xenophobia is easy. Compassion is difficult.

Resolving the tension between who we really are and how we portray ourselves is worthwhile.

You need a car to win a girl’s heart.  

– This Transformer Blog Post Sponsored By –

Good guy product placement: eBay, GM cars (Chevy, Camaro, Pontiac Solstice, Shelby GT), Motorola, The Strokes, My Little Pony, Lockheed (F-22, F-117 stealth fighter, C-130 gunship), Xbox-360, Sirius radio, Pepsi, Apple computers and cinema displays, Burger King, Panasonic, Furby, Hostess Ding Dongs. 

Bad guy product placement: eBay, Nokia, F-22, Mountain Dew soda, Saleen cop car (“To punish and enslave”).

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The Marx Brothers on Authentication

From Animal Crackers (1930), where Captain Spaulding is introduced to a musician at a party.

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding: Say, I used to know a fellow looked exactly like you, by the name of Emmanuel Raveli: Are you his brother?
Signor Emanuel Ravelli: I am Emmanuel Raveli.
Spaulding: You are Emmanuel Raveli?
Ravelli: I am Emmanuel Raveli.
Spaulding: Well, no wonder you look like him. But I still insist, there is a resemblance.
Ravelli: Ha, ha, ha. He thinks I look alike.
Spaulding: Well if you do, it’s a tough break for both of you.

Blodgett and Arquette: Separated at birth?

I’m watching a music documentary by actress Rosanna Arquette. She looks so much like master publicist Renee Blodgett in the face, voice pitch and body language. And they are both so interested in the humanities, especially music and dance. That and the two “t”s. Separated at birth?

I met Renee at the Boston Bloggercon (2? 3?) just before she moved to California.

And then I saw her last Saturday at Blogher06, another blogging event, still looking tan and so turned on by the ideas, people and fashion floating around the Hyatt’s pool.