This is Part 1 of The New Language Series, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is coming soon.

To clarify, I don’t mean the actual human person is dead.  I mean the term “consumer”—it should be deposited on the trash heap and banished to a brand’s Siberia. 

It’s out of date and out of touch. 

It implies a nameless, faceless statistic that watches ads, then buys, uses, eats, cleans, wears and throws away your product.  Those days are over.

I don’t like being thought of as a consumer; I’m sure no one does, but that’s how companies look at the people who generate their revenue and drive their ROI.

The whole notion of consumption has a pejorative connotation these days.  I take special care to reduce my consumer footprint. My mantra, especially in these recessionary times, is Reuse, Recycle and Repair. In fact, Rachel Botsman, author of “What’s Mine is Yours” predicts Collaborative Consumption as the next groundswell, and I agree.   In other words, consuming is not a growth business.

Instead, brands need to understand I’m an individual and that’s how I want to be spoken to. And if there are a lot of people like me, you can consider us your colleagues, but not consumers. We don’t consume all day and we are not building your consumer profiles.   

We interact, we relate, we communicate, we share. And we do those things with our friends, our relatives, and our families. And just lately, we’ve been doing that with brands. 

Instead of a consumer, if a brand treats me as a colleague, I feel we are participating in a relationship that grows, expands, gets richer, and if I am treated well, continues for a long time.  If I like your page on Facebook, or follow you on Twitter, we have entered into a new dynamic, that of “friends”.  You are in my stream, I have the ability to talk to you directly and you have the same in reverse.  We have entered into a social contract to listen to each other.  We have both become more human, more accessible, more connected.

In recognizing this new relationship, let’s treat each other with more respect.  You will have access to my data, my preferences, my habits and that can help you make better products. I will have access to communicate what I like, and especially what I dislike, to you directly and in joining other audience members who feel the way I do, I may have the power to change what you do. 

I believe we will both benefit from this new relationship as colleagues, and when we recognize that, we’ll be able to work together for a better experience.