Dear Brands, Our Relationship has Changed

Dear John

Dear Brands,I want an open relationship.

All my life, we’ve had a committed and dedicated relationship.  You told me what to buy.  I bought it and I bought it again.  But now, that’s about to change.  I don’t want to buy from you directly.  I want to rent, subscribe to, and borrow your goods.  If I end up buying your product, I want to use it with others to resell, rent to others, swap or lend.

It’s not you, it’s me.

Our world has changed, and along with it, my preferences.  From a more socially responsible mindset, economic pressures are sufficient, and technology makes it for me to find other consumers who can supply the things I need, virtually on demand.  Here’s how my behavior chains changing:

I will use AirBnb to find vacation spots, rather than stay at hotels.  I will use Uber and Lyft to get around town, rather than hire a traditional taxi.  I just put my spare car on RelayRide to rent out to others.  For my wife’s birthday, I bought her a subscription to Rent the Runway, rather than buying her a new dress.

At work, we’ve tapped into LiquidSpace to rent office space on demand.  I use Taskrabbit to hire folks at the office rather than using traditional staffing models.  We’ve bought refurbished laptops for our staff. Most of our software is already on demand.

Because of this, I’m more interested in renting, subscribing to, or borrowing products, rather than buying outright.  If I do choose to buy a product, I want to make sure it has great resale value so that I can sell it or rent it to make money.

It also means that the relationship I have with other people matters.  Now, I rent my car on RelayRide or sell my used electronics on Gazelle.  The trusted relationships I have with other customers matters as much, if not more, than my relationship with you.

I still love you, but in a different way.

If you want to be in a relationship with me, recognize that it’s not going to be exclusive.  What happens between us has changed.  I need you to change, as I want to rent, borrow, subscribe, co-op, and swap, rather than buy.

Ergo: I just want access to your offerings.  I don’t need to own then.

Sincerely,

Untitled

Jeremiah Owyang
Speaker, Writer, Business Owner, Consumer

PS: To learn more, you can read the rest of my thinking on how brands can leverage this movement, called the Collaborative Economy.

Image credit used with creative commons, by MyEye.

37 Replies to “Dear Brands, Our Relationship has Changed”

  1. Interesting. Harvard Business Review posted a case study about this economic movement last week, How to Play in the New “Share Economy” by Susan Fournier, Giana M. Eckhardt, and Fleura Bardhi. This is an interesting twist on bartering, and on the value of ownership.

  2. This isn’t new, though new technology has made it far more feasible than before.

  3. Love the metaphor. It reminds me of a favorite definition of branding: the ‘outsourcing of choice:’

    Robert Reich, in …The Future of Success, notes that modern consumers, like corporations, respond to the marketplace by outsourcing choice. They hire experts”critics, in the old way of looking at things. While many experts, such as interior decorators, offer personalized service and charge a mint, the masses have access to choosing services that are essentially free. That, in effect, is what a brand is. (Christopher Caldwell, Select All: Can you have too many choices, The New Yorker, March 1, 2004)

    But that definition has really evolved to the one you described, where consumers are even smarter outsourcers and bring their procurement team to the table for more and more categories. I think the key word in the quotation above is “corporations:” consumers are behaving like businesses in response to the myriad of choices.

  4. Renting is often more expensive than buying. It only makes sense with regard to things you don’t need/use often, or only need for a short amount of time. Chainsaws and tuxedos, sure. But do you really want to rent things like, say, underwear? How about appliances or furniture for your house? There are already plenty of places like Rent-A-Center that are happy to cater to those needs, but if you plan on needing a TV or sofa for more than a few months, it’s much cheaper to buy something outright. You can already lease cars easily.

    When you talk about things like AirB&B or Lyft, those aren’t really examples of rent vs. own anyway. You’re really just talking about shifting your dollars from corporations to individuals, which is fine, but don’t confuse that with a discussion about ownership.

    It’s also worth noting that (at least for now) much of this only applies to people living in high density population areas where there are enough people willing to participate in these ventures. For example, I live 15 miles west of Boston and tried to see if I could use Lyft to get a ride from the commuter rail station near my home to my house after a beer festival next month. The local cab company wants $20 to drive me two miles. Here’s the result: “Sorry, Lyft is not available in this area…”

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