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Hello, cor­po­rate Amer­ica. I’m a con­sumer. You have no idea who I am. For years, this hasn’t mat­tered to you. I’ve needed what you’ve pro­duced and I had no way of speak­ing to or stand­ing up to you.

But things have changed.

You are no longer the shin­ing star of the Amer­i­can econ­omy, you are a nec­es­sary annoy­ance we must put up with. You’re face­less, soul­less and usu­ally only donate to save money on your taxes. And we don’t trust you.

You think you’re bet­ter than us, or at least your ads seem to say that. We don’t like to be yelled at any­more, we just want to talk. Seri­ously, that’s it. You have peo­ple work­ing for you, how about ask­ing them to? There are still some peo­ple left, right?

Try Twit­ter. Write a blog. Pro­duce a pod­cast.

You can’t ignore us any­more. You can’t pre­tend that we don’t mat­ter. You can’t sit in your tall build­ings and cavort with your $2MM/yr ad com­pa­nies and your $500/hr lawyers with­out us noticing.

You’re being exposed and that freaks you out. Instead of embrac­ing us, US, your loyal con­sumers, you are fight­ing to con­trol your mes­sage. The more you do, the more you’ll lose.

Let us know you still like us. Let us know you appre­ci­ate us. Talk to us on Face­book, don’t buy ads. Share your sto­ries on BlogHer, don’t hire writ­ers. Show us that you know we’re not stupid.

If you don’t, I’m going to con­nect with your clients. I’m going to talk to your cus­tomers. I’m going to show them that they don’t need you anymore.

Unless you pro­duce a good that we can’t live with­out, I’m going to make you irrel­e­vant. Sure, you’ll still be in busi­ness, but I’ll have your mindshare.

Or you could show us that we matter.

More from tdhurst

• Dear brands: get off my social networks
• ESPN, we didn’t expect this from you
• You don’t count if you don’t show up
• Adver­tis­ing: becom­ing irrel­e­vant (is dead)
• Nar­cis­sism is killing us

Arkayne recommends

• Divorce, find­ing that new spe­cial friend and mov­ing on (Arthur)
• SELLING THE SIZZLE (The Chris Voss Show)
• Divorce, rebuild your life, get out of that mort­gage (Arthur)