Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

This post was inspired by an email I received this morning about an event entitled “Managing the Consumer Clamour“.

The digital industry appears to be split into two in my opinion. The first half is made up of those who don’t talk about ‘managing the consumer’ because they understand the art of conversation - instead, they talk about how to enable a better conversation between brand and consumer. In fact, the best of them aren’t talking about it at all, they’re just doing it as it comes natural.

The other half is made up of old media - they’re still talking about ‘managing the consumer’ and trying to figure out how to control what they say.

You can’t manage the consumer clamour. What you can do, is influence it by making sure you get involved in the conversation. It’s cheaper and easier than ever, with tools readily available to help everyone become a publisher/creator - enabling them to influence the perception of a particular brand. This is normally done through personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and other forms of public arenas where it’s easy to publish an opinion for everyone to see.

What should you do?

Stop talking about trying to manage what people say. It’s impossible. In fact, trying to control what people say is worse than doing nothing. Instead, talk about how to get involved by listening to what the crowd has to say and then react accordingly. Soon, you will become proactive by asking the crowd what they think upfront.

If only I was Hugh McLeod. I could capture all of this and more, in one cartoon. Here’s a post by Hugh that’s relevant though.