Macro Trend 6: C2c Is More Powerful Than B2c Communication
At the time of writing, the buzz-phrase ‘word of mouth’ is being lauded as an incredible new invention. The term ‘conversation’ is a very ’2.0′ thing, apparently. It’s almost like personal interaction is a new thing, whereas it pre-dates everything else.
Peer influence/word of mouth, will have emerged when there was more than one person on earth. Ironically though, it’s only in recent times that the communications industry is becoming aware of how citizens interact because the infrastructure is now in place for fast and wide conversations to happen outside peoples family, workplace or village. Plus, media and devices are becoming more personal.
This dawn of realisation has sprouted new experts. Those who grasp (what is essentially) elementary psychology, can better understand the ‘social’ trend, yet many people in the communications world are surrounded by an all-consuming legacy of ‘the way things are done’, which goes against common sense in many cases.
Citizen to Citizen (my version of C2C) is only more powerful than Business to Consumer communication when citizens are in an environment of understanding and better still, trust.
When there is understanding and trust, any number of citizens communicating are untouchable in terms of influence impact.
But surely that is no surprise?
The mindset of treating everyone like a lowly ‘consumer’ or worse, an ‘end user’, is the most patronising, insulting and offensive way of approaching any dealings with real people.
Understanding will never come from this mindset.
Trust will never come from this mindset.
To accelerate communication power, businesses must learn from the way that citizens interact most effectively.
When we build relationships, we learn about each other. This is a two-way process. Nothing to do with spying on behaviour or implying some kind of pseudo-intellect from scrappy data that resides in numerous silos.
Many of the practices I see heralded at conferences, are analogistic to hiding in the bushes outside someone’s house, breathing heavily and scribbling down notes on a pad for later use.
When we best learn about each other, we find common ground. We look for areas in which we can be valuable to each other. Nothing to do with one person treating the other like a slave or acting like a stalker.
Thus I attest that Citizen to Citizen communication is more powerful than Business to Consumer communication only because businesses mostly treat people in a sub-optimal way.
If organisations can learn from real people then maybe they can grow up to act like real people – ergo, enjoy the symbiotic power of communicating in a fruitful, productive and valuable relationship.
