This post on the excellent Freakonomics blog by Ian Ayres provides an alleged quotation from Charlie Sheen. It is at once frightening and an immensely valuable marketing insight.
When Sheen was being sentenced for using a prostitute, the judge asked him why a man like him would have to pay for sex. And Sheen reportedly replied: “I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.”
The business executive who relates this story to Ayres then points out that it is for this same no-strings-attached reason he likes employing consultants. When the job is over, you simply tell them to go. Ayres goes on.....
This story got me thinking about the demand for non-relational contracting. .....Sheen’s (possibly apocryphal) quotation has me thinking that there may be contexts in which people would pay a premium to avoid a relationship.
Some people may at times prefer A.T.M.’s to tellers in part because they don’t want to speak to tellers. Some people may prefer Merry Maids to a regular housekeeper (or may prefer to be absent when the cleaning is done). Or some people may prefer buying at Amazon.com in part because of the lack of human contact.
I suspect, in fact, that a surprising amount of the success of large corporations is down to the fact that, they offer the kind of perfunctory, impersonal transactions family-owned firms simply can't match. Although it agonises about becoming "part of the community", I actually like Starbucks because I can sit around there for hours using the wifi on the strength of having bought one small coffee, yet without feeling a hint of emotional discomfort -- something I can't do at my local family-owned coffee shop. Anyone ever cancelled a Travelodge the night before you stay? You're hardly tortured by the pangs of guilt, are you?
The same horror of personal contact explains the popularity of Argos. And the marked enthusiasm for online shopping found among emotionally repressed northern peoples like the British, as opposed to over-wrought Mediterranean types (who are generally incapable of having an oil change without first embracing the car-mechanic like a long-lost brother).
There's a lesson here for eBay, who paid over a billion for Skype on the outlandish premise that we didn't only want to buy a novelty baseball cap from a bloke in Akron Ohio, we also wanted to become his best friend. There's a lesson for hotels - "No I don't want some *** to carry my bag to my room - I've just brought it 6,000 miles on my own, why do you think I can't carry it along a corridor". And there's also a lesson for some loyalty-scheme devotees. No, we don't always want a relationship.
And there's a lesson for anyone who things automated service is always a poor substitute for personal service. It may be a massive improvement.
