Editor’s leader

Rising inflation, higher fuel bills, soaring food prices, lower consumer confidence, slowing economies: it’s a depressing time. But at the risk of sounding facetious, I have a theory that some sectors of society are doing all right, thank you very much, despite the current financial climate. They are veterinarians and dentists.
     Last month, my tiny terrier swallowed a plastic wine stopper (heaven knows where he found such a thing)! The upshot was two days in ‘hospital’ after emergency surgery – and a bill for £600. In the same week, I was booked in for orthodontist work, for which I am paying £1,700 (and will be for some time!). 
     The size of these bills might explain why you rarely see a dentist or a vet doing a door-drop or a multi-channel campaign. They don’t need to brainstorm about surviving a recession or increasing trade internationally. And I doubt that email ethics or data protection issues haunt their dreams. Unlike sales teams and marketers . . . and now governments, which are being told they should try to win people’s trust by showing greater respect for their privacy.
     Some regions of the Far East are renowned for zealous state regulation of citizens but the once liberal UK also labours under a culture of Big Brother, with more spy cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world. Yet, despite this scrutiny of minutiae, incidents of ID theft are on the increase. Information has become criminal currency as thieves mug us for our data. Which is worrying . . . but will that concern curb our ‘knowledge society’? Of course not: most of us are rational privacy pragmatists, quite willing to give out simple personal information where we can see it might enhance privacy – ie, telling a salesman if you don’t have a dog to stop him shoving ads for Meatos through the letterbox.
     The information age provides a two-way street – consumers can shout opinions very loudly into the ether about goods and services, via email and blog. Just yesterday, a chain email urged me and hundreds of others not to eat in a certain restaurant because of its rather aggressive service charge policy. I fully expect that restaurant to be closed forever within days – chewed up and spat out by the ‘citizen marketer’. Truly, the most powerful force in the universe is not fear, but gossip.
 

Sally Hooton is editor, DMI magazine.