The icentered paradigm shift calls for a completely new culture and mindset in digital relations management
A car is not merely a faster horse
And email is not a faster fax.
And online project management is not a bigger whiteboard.
And Facebook is not an electronic rolodex.
Play a new game, not the older game but faster.
Paradigm shifts have to carry an authentic voice, visions that not only defy existing orders, but create alternatives that echo new zeitgeist and worldviews, and suits all parties’ needs.
A paradigm shift for digital relations must provide a reciprocal alternative. Bilateral relations. It has to build on a dialog that is not necessarily initiated by the provider as a marketing discourse, but rather as an answer to customers’ wishes and compatibility to what suits them best.
The current marketing discourse in the digital world undermines trust because it is manipulative and unilateral. Providers tend to take a patronizing attitude where, in the name of owning what customers need, they hold the keys to what is good for us and what suits us most, and under this pretense have the right to try and get hold of our attention wherever we are.
We, consumers, have to constantly watch for proofs of whether marketers indeed adhere to the policies and values they declare, to what extent they manipulate us, breach our privacy, unsolicited invade our social spheres and capitalize on our data without really considering us equal partners in other than lip service statements.
Times have changed – digital platforms, social media and new technologies have turned us into active choice makers. As consumers – we are aware of our power and place in the food chain and do not automatically succumb to marketing stories.
A new pact is needed to accommodate that.
The icentered paradigm shift calls for looking at the digital universe not from a global corporate based world view, but from a truly personal vantage point – and reconcile both into a meshed reality where we, each individual I that inhabits the web, exercises a personal web where “I am the center of my web experience; in the driver’s seat with the reins in my hands”. In such a paradigm, relations with providers respect that anchor and are reversed to empower it, in a way that although they will have to relinquish control and hegemony, they gain trust and respect and thus increase profits through genuine choices of the clients they serve.
The shift from push marketing, where marketers want to be present with their monologues wherever they can find us, to pull based interactions where we choose what suits us most, requires new marketing tools, new platforms and infrastructures to create a new trust base. This reverse balance is a trust enhancer, does not menace users and makes everybody equal participants in transparent and trustworthy food chains.
The culture, ethics and codes of conduct of the icentered paradigm stem from a total sense of freedom, self-control and a clear notion of the value of individual distinctiveness. To embrace that, providers need to realize that they can’t just talk the talk of putting users in the center, protecting their privacy, considering them as partners in a conversation…. They have to start walking the walk for a completely different ballgame.
The notion of personalization, the holy grail of marketers for keeping customers captive in their walled gardens, shifts into a concept of Itoms, the smallest comprehensive unit that describes each one of us as a whole, as a unique individual, through all interactions, across all sites, platforms and media.
Looking at the digital world through a prismatic view of each individual Itom, creates a new vantage point for web based relations. Once we look at it through the lens of a people’s web, it’s an “I in the center” paradigm, where each user becomes a distinct anchor. It makes categorizing, segmenting, profiling, and treating users as a means for an end …. Impossible.
It will enhance many new forms of service and goods providing, because it forces reciprocal relationships instead of vendor initiated manipulations. It requires soft attributes, formerly unknown to the traditional marketing world. Relationships by definitions require trust, ease and open endedness that are counterintuitive to the prevailing marketing paradigms and therefore require new interaction modes and food chains.
