David Ogilvy once famously said ‘the customer isn’t stupid,
she is your wife’. So would you call your wife ‘a punter’? I very much doubt it.
And yet too often in many businesses there is a tendency not
only to consider customers as stupid, as morons, as cash cows. Look at the
recent furore over the launch of England’s World Cup strip to see how
prospective customers think they are being treated by Nike.
But not only are customers seen in this light but there is a
tendency to refer to customers as ‘punters’. I so hate that term for the people
who pay our wages. And if anyone doubts this consider what Henry Ford said ‘it
is not the employer who pays our wages..we only handle the money..it is the
customer who pays our wages’.
Surely then we should treat these very important people with
more respect.
According to the OED
a punter is a prostitute’s client. Is that how we think of ourselves? As
a prostitute doing anything we can to make some money? Hardly a noble
profession.
Alternatively a punter is a person ‘who gambles, places a
bet or makes a risky investment’. Do we really think that someone who buys our
brand is making a bet or doing some risky? Surely the brand is more confident
and self-assured than that?
So we would not refer to our wives as ‘punters’. Surely we do not see our profession as akin to
prostitution. And nor do we would consider anyone buying our brand as doing
something risky.
Therefore it is not appropriate to call our customers
‘punters’.
So let us show due respect and deference to those who buy
our brands, our products and services, and let us call them customers.
And maybe then we might stop thinking of them as stupid.
