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I believe that, unlike our political system which can disenfranchise us from our own governance and allows us expression only once per voting term, the marketplace is, in effect, a vibrant, working democracy, where ordinary people get to express on a daily basis their thoughts and feelings about how they want to live their lives.
My “power to the people” love for customers started as a child, when my mother taught me to treat others they way I would want to be treated, and my father would drop everything as president of the town bank to meet with an upset customer. Business was not about money: it was about helping people. Treating customers as kings did not just make good business sense (because without customers there is no business), but elevating customers also served as a kind of moral justice—a way to right some of the slights that regular people have faced, and a chance to tell someone in the community, “You matter.” As Dr. Seuss (1954) has written, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Later, in my Advertising program at the Florida State University, I learned that the best advertisements are those that are captivating not to the agency, not to the company, but to the customer. After college, I had the chance to practice the art of retail trust relationships when I listened to customers’ complaints about sore feet and used my expertise to help them find the healthiest pair of shoes. I had many repeat customers because I earned my customers’ trust. I was touched to realize that what customers really wanted most was someone to listen to them.
At Bowling Green State University, I had the privilege of studying under one of the founders of relationship marketing, Dr. Martha Rogers, who had just published The One-to-One Future. It was Dr. Rogers who opened my eyes to the drastic paradigm shift in marketing forced by changing from an industrial age to the information age. One-to-one technology mandates customizable, addressable, two-way marketing communication. Interactive communication media become marketing’s new message: How well are we really listening and responding to our customers?