I wrote earlier this week about boycotts and the pervasive idea that they “don’t work”. I hope I’ve explained why that’s the wrong way to think about your choices; you can’t punish Nestle or Vodafone by withholding your custom, but where you spend your money should still matter to you.
I’ve always felt that the best marketing leaves the (potential) customer feeling in control. You’ve set out your stall to look as attractive as possible, and it’s up to them to browse. Of course you’re working hard behind the scenes to encourage them to buy, but they don’t feel pushed into it. But if you ignore the customer’s need for that sense of control, you end up with a completely different dynamic.
We’ve all been there. You’ve found something you want to buy online and you’re happy with the price, so you pop it in your virtual basket and head for the online checkout. It’s all going swimmingly... but you’re not going to be allowed to just buy the item. Oh, no no no. The site asks you to log in. Or perhaps it asks if you’re a new or returning customer. Or perhaps it asks you to register or create an account. Whatever the wording, it’s basically the same demand: before you can buy this item from us, you have to get into an artificial relationship with us.
Earlier I criticisede-consultancy.com about an article purporting to explain what journalists look for when they come to a website. I'm going to post some constructive advice soon, but first I want to highlight the assumptions behind the article and why they're wrong.
It reads as if the writer has enrolled in a Victorian object lesson about journalism, but never actually met a real live journalist. It represents the newsgathering process about as well as What Women Want mapped the depths of female consciousness.
At the time of writing, Google is returning 1,160,000 results for the search term “community newspaper”, as opposed to 192,000 for “regional newspaper”. On that basis, you could be forgiven for thinking that community journalism has become the most prevalent form of print media in the world today.