thanks for your insightful comment.
collin

Sounds perfect. Well, that is, until you read the suggestions for how an organisation can tap into “lifehacking”:
- “Get involved. Get in on the ground floor by helping solve a problem or supporting efforts….” – “Sponsor a site….Craft your messages…”
- “Seek advice from the community.”

This is hardly new. Even lowly IA/UXP/ID people like myself were advocating, then evolving, these kind of approaches many years ago. Ultimately, the “Hack a customer’s life…” line is the same lame crap I’ve been hearing from marketers and professional services organisations (Stoller’s an Organic man) for the last 18-24 months. It is, essentially, too little, too late. To cut to the chase, what’s missing is any discussion focused on the notion “be trustworthy.”

(I’m not even going to touch the link included in the article that leads to a domain parking page.)

Being trustworthy is not something that can be dismissed ‘out of hand’ by suggesting such a condition can be assumed. Current marketing practices are all to often (by default?) antithetical to the kind of transparent trust people (consumers, users, clients, etc.) can personally validate and in which they can engage. (Such is one of the underpinnings of the “Radical Trust” blog.) Ultimately, the difference between what is epitomized in approaches like “hacking a customer’s life” and “building trust in which people invest” lies at the crux of selling in the age of the networked consumer–the one who can check-up on you and rapidly inform others of the experience.

Then again, what do I know? I’m just a simple prairie boy who grew up near enough to the natural version of bull shit that he has no patience for the artificial, corporate version.

MEET JOE ON-DEMAND, the opt-in consumer who doesnt care about the way things used to be.

“Dont call me. Ill call you. I Say: Search and ye shall find. You can come to me. But more likely, Ill come to you.
Im unpredictable. I know what I want. I bu…