RE: [projectvrm] VRM as an advertising search term

["Nathan Schor" < >]

Title: RE: [projectvrm] VRM as an advertising search term

As a viable alternative to VRM, what do folks think of 'Customer Initiated Commerce' which I'm starting to use, encouraged by some initial good feedback.

Or a close 2nd choice: 'Customer Empowered Commerce'

Or the semantically equivalent, but more alliterative:

'Customer Controlled Commerce' or 'Customer Commenced Commerce'

I agree the term VRM, in its entirety as discussed on this list, clearly encompasses more than commerce.

 But for the subset of interest on commercializing our marketing initiative, a term centralized around 'commerce' (or its equivalent) works well right out of the mouth.

BTW It's my intent to start, yet again, a discussion of the pros and cons of branding ourselves with the venerable 'VRM' label, an issue discussed here many times. If I recall accurately, Doc described how the term was adopted initially, somewhat inadvertently, by his fellow authors of Cluetrain, thereby becoming the default description.

Since the term was born in the embryonic days of this movement, it's not surprising VRM doesn’t now cover fully the impact of the marketing initiative Cluetrain inspired. All in all, VRM served us well, at minimal as a counter-point to CRM.

My biggest issue with VRM as it stands now is a practical one: Not taking the most persuasive route when initiating a communication encounter (both face-to-face and written).

When introducing the movement to someone uninformed, the term positions me at a persuasive disadvantage because I'm forced to first correct VRM's natural semantic meaning of supplying goods/services amongst vendors, before pointing out the customer empowerment component at the heart of VRM. The upshot is missing to ignite the crucial chemistry of the initial moment.

Nathan Schor 305.632.1368 ">

Brief bio: My main interest is customer-initiated commerce. I also teach a class, 'Persuasion for Founders and Engineers', as well mentor startups in sales and marketing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Browning [ ">mailto: ]
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2015 7:26 AM
To: 'Doc Searls' < >; 'ProjectVRM list' < >
Subject: RE: [projectvrm] VRM as an advertising search term

Would suggest it's possibly an accidental misdirection and simply draws on the Gartner defn of VRM:

http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/vendor-risk-management

Doc - have you ever had interactions with Gartner about the use of the acronym VRM?! Perhaps you should - as an education exercise if nothing more! ;)

P.

-----Original Message-----

From: Doc Searls [ ">mailto: ]

Sent: Wednesday, 26 August 2015 12:01 AM

To: ProjectVRM list < "> >

Subject: [projectvrm] VRM as an advertising search term

Just looked up “Vendor Relationship Management” on Google, and at the top of the results is an ad for VRM (with the Wikipedia definition) by a company called Vendor Insight: <http://www.vendorinsight.com/>. It’s a B2B thing, about vendor risk management, and has zero to do with what we’re about here. But it’s interesting that they use VRM (as we define it, via Wikipedia) as bait.

Doc

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