The other day I posted this question to a college blog I was writing for and I thought that you might be interested as well.

How should a university be teaching subject matter when, with the present information revolution that has been going on for the past ten years, changes things almost on a daily basis?  This new available information does not have much of an impact on the hard sciences (chemistry, bio-chemistry, physics or medicine) nor does it impact history, philosophy, music or the languages.  However, sociology, business, marketing and communications are changing, literally, daily.

With the accessibility of the multitude of new platforms available and the mechanisms for people sharing information and conversation, societal norms are no longer normal. People are developing new expectations of companies and other people in general.  Sharing is becoming the norm.  Honesty is not just expected but required and interaction is demanded.

You know I have a love of statistics and one of the most common I get a kick out of is:  4 out of 5 pediatricians recommend X.  This is the same thing as saying, 1 out of 5 pediatricians would not recommend X.  Or to belabor this further, 20% of ALL pediatricians would NOT recommend X.  So now, are you going to give X to YOUR kid?

Now the real funny thing about this is, parents are learning not to believe (or even look at) this claim in advertising.  Instead, they will go on Facebook and ask their friends or even go to Twitter and ask the world for their advice.  There is becoming less and less of a need for advertising and even less of a reason to believe claims in advertising.  I don’t have to believe or trust you any longer.  I have access to enough people to ask, that I can find 2 or 3, or 300, which have a firsthand experience with you.  They have nothing to gain or lose from telling me the truth about you or your product.

In the world of everyday issues, collective wisdom is the determinate of the choices being made.  As platforms expand, become the norm and are used throughout society, information will be garnered by means of the collective wisdom of society.  Businesses, marketing firms and universities would be well advised to get out in front of it.

Photo by Gary Hayes

There is a car dealership in town that I occasionally do business with and as a result, I am on their email list.  They send out information on promotions and new “used” inventory that comes in from time to time.  They don’t send out information often and so I haven’t taken the time to opt-out of their list, although I should.

A month or so ago, I received an email from them saying that Mircrosoft was going to pay me (and them) for every friend I could forward this email to.  The request was “Please please please  forward this to everyone on your list.  This time it’s true and they really are going to pay.”  Ok, I can be pretty gullible at times but even I didn’t believe this one.  It seems, however, that about 1/4 of the people on their list were.  Maybe it was because the request came from a business rather than an individual that made it more believable.  I don’t know.

You are probably wondering how I know that roughly 1/4 of the people on their list were convinced to send this email out.  Well, their list showed the email addresses of everyone they sent to and, as a result, I received the same email from about 1/4 of the list.  All of them believing they were going to get paid great sums of money for all their friends.  I guess I was one of their friends.

I knew the car dealership was sending their emails this way when they first started sending them to me but didn’t think too much about it.  I didn’t much care for it but didn’t think that anyone on their list cared about my email address and I certainly didn’t care about theirs.  After receiving all of those emails though, I cared – a lot.

Almost immediately, I sent an email to them letting them know what I thought of how they handled their email addresses and that I did not appreciate being spammed by them.  If they couldn’t learn how to handle email addresses correctly they were to immediately take my name off their list.  While I was surprised by the fact that I did not hear back from them with an apology or something, the next email from them came through an email service provider and did not disclose everyones email address.

The point of this story is simple.  We all need to realize that our lists are very valuable assets.  Our customers have entrusted us with their personal information and it is our responsibility to protect that information as though it were gold.  That means doing everything in our power to make sure their email address doesn’t get out to anyone else.  It also means having enough respect for those on your list not to send junk to them.  We all get enough of that from our real friends, right?

As we have discussed before, your list can be a very powerful asset of your business.  It is advertising that is focused like none other.  Take good care of it.

What are your thoughts on this?

Photo credit:  cindy47452