Blogging has been light over the past few days. I've been traveling and pitching a lot of new business, in addition to my usual account work. On top of that, the things that are foremost in my mind are almost all confidential stuff I can't write about (yet). Things will pick up around here, though. I promise.
Chaotic Truth did an investigation on the folks calling Sprint customers. I don't know that I agree with his ultimate conclusion, but I do think it's possible this is a phishing scam. While that may be the case, I wonder why the scam seems to affect only Sprint customers. It makes me wonder if Sprint's customer database has been hacked, if they've sold some customer names to the wrong people, or if our personal information has been compromised in some way. Only time will tell, I guess.
Apologies to Brad Berens and Cory Treffiletti. And kudos to Joe Jaffe. Brad published a piece this morning entitled "There's Nothing Wrong with User" on iMediaConnection.com, which dealt chiefly with trying to find a substitute for the silly phrase "Consumer Generated Content."
In it, Brad rightly points out that the word "Consumer" in this context is offensive. He then goes on to say he's "not crazy about 'user,' but it's better than 'consumer' by orders of magnitude." He then tells Jaffe to "get over it" with respect to his objections to "user."
That we spend so much time on this crap is silly in and of itself, but if we're going to have tiffs over which term to use, let's at least get it right.
"User" is better than "consumer," but only marginally so. While "user" doesn't necessarily have that nasty connotation that comes from corporations seeing their customers as mere consumers of product. But it does do something that "consumer" also did, which is to draw an artificial line of distinction between "ordinary folks" (as Brad termed them in his article) and what we've traditionally thought of as professional content producers.
The truth of the matter is that everybody, is now a producer of content. So if you want to describe the notion of people who have never really produced content before starting to do just that, may I suggest referencing the "Citizen Publishing Movement?" Otherwise, just call the content what it is - a mash-up, a web short, a blog post or what have you.
BTW, we also need to stop referring to everything that goes up on the Internet as "content." Some of it is probably more accurately described as "conversation." New applications and emerging social systems aren't necessarily content, yet many of us regularly refer to such things as content. Probably due to many years of having that now-dead phrase uttered in our ears at every opportunity - "Content is King."
Kudos to Jaffe for dissing "user."
Just wanted to point you to the comments within the Sprint Still Sucks thread. It seems that Sprint is continuing to solicit customers on their mobile phones, and that they're hanging up on a lot of people. Instead of calling the number back, many folks are Googling it instead. Some are finding this blog. And the past few comments indicate that Sprint's mobile spam is turning people off and making them want to avoid signing with Sprint. My guess is that Sprint will continue their campaign, though. Marketing data tends to accentuate the positive, and I'm sure there are marketing VPs looking at spreadsheets right now, seeing a trickle of new customers come in from the outbound telemarketing efforts. Since I'll bet they're probably not asking themselves how many customers they're losing due to the effort, it will likely continue.
This is a great example of why the Ethic of Reciprocity rules supreme in marketing, even over fancy spreadsheets that show positive customer growth numbers. If it seems like it's disrespectful, it is disrespectful, regardless of what a spreadsheet tells you.
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