Monday, July 10, 2006
The Personal and The Impersonal...
I go to the same grocery store almost daily. The checkers there know me quite well, they're friends. We talk about vacations and kids and church, and whatever, just like friends. Yet everytime I check out they HAVE to ask me if I want help out to the car, and they KNOW I am going to refuse. If they don't ask me they get in trouble. This is an obvious cookie-cutter approach to friendly service.
I understand why they should ask customer they do not know, but why ask a customer like me? The answer is because marketing studies show that most people WANT an anaonymous, impersonal, but "friendly" shopping experience. Thus Wal-Mart can hire the retired to greet you at the door and people feel like searching through acres of stuff for a quart of oil is a good shopping experience.
Couldn't help but think about that when I ran into this piece in the NYTimes. It's about the Internet and using it to "niche".
But the most striking thing about this trend to me is it is as, or more, impersonal as the mass-marketing approach, it simply lacks the mass. When Ebay started one of the things I really enjoyed was dealing with certain vendors that I used regularly and knew - they became firends, we exchanged Chrstmas cards, etc. Not anymore - the less interaction, the better.
From a business perspective, the arguement is, of course, that personal interaction harms productivity, I understand that, what I cannot understand is why we as consumers desire the same impersonal approach. Why are we so isolated from others and wish to remain so?
The daily grocery store habit mentioned above developed for me when I was single and worked from home. That trip to the store was oftent he only social interaction I would have in a day - I relished it, I cherished it. Now it seems as if someone in the position I was in would avoid it.
What really set me to thinking about this was something I linked to yesterday from SmartChristian:
The point is the personal -- the one.
The problems with the mass marketing approach in church's have been well discussed at this point - the commodification of faith, the watering down of the gospel for the sake of the audience, the lack of personal accountability...need I go on? It seems we are now finding ways to continue this trend in the negative direction without even the challenge to get up on Sunday and trapse to the meeting barn.
But the gospel isn't about trends or markets, numbers or niches, it's about Jesus Christ - a person, and it is about each of us, again - a person. We fear the personal because it once you are on a personal level you can be genuinely and deeply influenced, perhaps even changed.
But then isn't change the point?
Related Tags: marketing, niche, internet, church, megachurch, gospel, change
I understand why they should ask customer they do not know, but why ask a customer like me? The answer is because marketing studies show that most people WANT an anaonymous, impersonal, but "friendly" shopping experience. Thus Wal-Mart can hire the retired to greet you at the door and people feel like searching through acres of stuff for a quart of oil is a good shopping experience.
Couldn't help but think about that when I ran into this piece in the NYTimes. It's about the Internet and using it to "niche".
The lengthening of the long tail means that old or minimally popular stuff ? like an old Slate article or a new album by an obscure Bolivian folk musician ? is becoming more valuable thanks to the falling costs of production, storage and distribution. Or as Mr. Anderson puts it on his blog, markets are "increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of 'hits' at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail"My first comment is this is old hat to astute bloggers (once again legacy media behind the curve) - one only need look at things like the new Townhall blog to figure that out.
But the most striking thing about this trend to me is it is as, or more, impersonal as the mass-marketing approach, it simply lacks the mass. When Ebay started one of the things I really enjoyed was dealing with certain vendors that I used regularly and knew - they became firends, we exchanged Chrstmas cards, etc. Not anymore - the less interaction, the better.
From a business perspective, the arguement is, of course, that personal interaction harms productivity, I understand that, what I cannot understand is why we as consumers desire the same impersonal approach. Why are we so isolated from others and wish to remain so?
The daily grocery store habit mentioned above developed for me when I was single and worked from home. That trip to the store was oftent he only social interaction I would have in a day - I relished it, I cherished it. Now it seems as if someone in the position I was in would avoid it.
What really set me to thinking about this was something I linked to yesterday from SmartChristian:
Mother Thresea followed Jesus? way of loving the one among the many. Yes there were many sick, hungry and dieing around Calcutta, yet her energy was concentrated on the one soul created in the image of God she was ministering and interacting with. The many did not distract her from the one. As her eyes penetrated a single soul, the rest of the world seemed to disappear.It has been said that the mega-church trend is following the "big box" marketing trend. I have no doubt whatsoever that as this niche form of internet marketing takes over retail, we are going to see the church try to imitate it, and in so doing they will once again entirely miss the point.
Help us God to love the ?one? so often lost and lonely among the ?crowds? of our modern society.
The point is the personal -- the one.
The problems with the mass marketing approach in church's have been well discussed at this point - the commodification of faith, the watering down of the gospel for the sake of the audience, the lack of personal accountability...need I go on? It seems we are now finding ways to continue this trend in the negative direction without even the challenge to get up on Sunday and trapse to the meeting barn.
But the gospel isn't about trends or markets, numbers or niches, it's about Jesus Christ - a person, and it is about each of us, again - a person. We fear the personal because it once you are on a personal level you can be genuinely and deeply influenced, perhaps even changed.
But then isn't change the point?
Related Tags: marketing, niche, internet, church, megachurch, gospel, change
