An alignment of interests.
From the Flickr of jetheriot.
A couple of conversations I’ve had in the last couple of weeks have got me thinking. A little while ago I was talking with a neighbour about how more auto manufacturers are shifting production closer to the point of sale. Yesterday a conversation about Walmart’s sourcing of local produce reminded me of the same things.
First, the increasing linkage between environmental impact and costs is creating an economic incentive to do the right thing. After years of debate around off-shoring, or support for local farms, or other policy fixes, the solution in the end has simply been to create a holistic system of measurement which allows people to understand the real cost of their decisions. This plays on a number of themes that are near and dear to my heart. The role and importance of numbers and measurement, as well as the undoing of the fragmentation and specialization wrought by the industrial revolution.
The second is that the benefits of both of these decisions extend into better and more effective platforms for marketing. In commodity categories, they (Walmart and the auto manufacturers) have created meaningful reasons for choosing their products. Patagonia has previously used this in its Footprint Chronicles.
The third and final observation is that the automotive and big-box retail industries have typically been among the most exploitative. The fact that change is coming, and so quickly, to them gives me immense hope that we will stop thinking about how to compete and market at the expense of othersand instead have more conversations about how to align our interests with those of our customers (and potentially others).