Apple doesn’t care about you personally in the least tiny bit, and if you were in their way somehow, they would do whatever their might — effectively infinite compared to your own — enables them to deal with you.

Brent Simmons 

Atleast your favourite athletes and celebrities pretend to care about you by feeding you sweet nothings when they win tournaments or launch movies. 

Corporations care about making money. That in and of itself is not a bad thing. There are few better incentives than profit to do things efficiently. But as Peter Drucker put it ‘Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.’

I think my industry is efficient. But far from effective. Here is why:

1. Brand perception trumps actual product. Companies will and do spend more money in you having positive thoughts about the company and what it does. Be it through celebs, advertising and presentation. Companies will go out of their way to position a flawed, sub-par ingredient laden product as good for you. When they could have done better by spending a little more making a better product with better ingredients. The rat race for brand perception trumps any sense of pride in making a worthy product or service. 

2. No accountability. The buck stops when the product or service is shipped out. Companies go out of their way to not take responsibility or craft a narrative that absolves them for what their product or service does. 

3. No skin in the game. Either through ignorance, degrees of separation from actually production or the notion of buyer beware, employees of companies that make things don’t really care enough about what their organisation provides a paying customer. They don’t have a voice. And rarely fight to have a say in what gets made. 

4. Gyms are not geared, built or incentivised to educate or make you training-independent. They care about signing as many people up and don’t care if you show up. Except when renewal time shows up. 

Takeaway 

There is a vicious cycle of corporates blaming their customers for making junk under the pretext of the customer being value conscious. And customers settling for junk from companies because they don’t believe companies can do better. 

The only person who can break that vicious cycle is the consumer who can by virtue of how they spend, decide how corporates spend their money and time. 

You decide if packaging trumps product. 

You decide if the celeb endorsement means more than better ingredients. 

You also decide if flashy interiors trump informed coaches. 

You can’t have it all. But neither should companies.