A time to embrace

I’ve got a question for you. Leaving work aside for a minute, (not an unappealing prospect I’m sure) when was the last time that, as a consumer, you didn’t get what you want? Some time around 1946 I’d say, in the austerity years, with rationing still in full force. Now that may be overly facetious, but my point is, when it comes to buying stuff…in the western world at least…the consumer is king. We book our holidays online and print off our own boarding cards, download music whenever we want and scan our groceries through the self checkout at the supermarket rather than queuing at the tills. The big brands have embraced theses innovations, because they know that their success depends on their ability to give us what we want, when we want it.

Sad though it was to hear the statistics illustrating the demise of the independent record shops recently, there’s a reason why that’s happened. And it’s irreversible, despite Blur’s noble efforts in pressing a single solely for release through these outlets on Record Store Day. Music distribution has changed beyond recognition and is still doing so. It could be noted that Damon Albarn has hardly shied away from non-traditional approaches to pop with his other endeavour, virtual band Gorillaz, but I’m not one to split hairs. My point is that if consumers want to download music from the ‘comfort of their PC’, then it makes sense for the music industry to make it available that way. Take Guitar Hero, who would have thought having a song included in a video game could be the holy grail of chart success? But life’s too short to question the whys and wherefores, if that’s the marketplace du jour, then bands know they’d better get their stalls out.

Of course you’d expect youth culture to be at the forefront of changes in distribution, but people power spreads far more widely than that. Grocery retailing, the bastion of the masses, will avoid being edgy at all costs. Yet with 55p in every pound spent in a supermarket, it certainly knows which side its bread is buttered. Jennifer England head of consumer PR for Asda, said in an interview in Marketing Week late last year: “Customers are demanding more say, more involvement and more of a stake in what they buy, how they buy it and who they buy it from. That’s why we’re trying to put customers at the heart of our business and involving them in a bigger, more meaningful way than ever before in the decision-making process … they are dictating strategy...”

The point about people power is, it works. The supermarkets know it, the music industry knows it…but does the insurance industry know it? I’ll leave that up to you as you start thinking about work again.

Matthew Reed is chief executive of PowerPlace.