This just in from news.com.au’s business section:

“THE head of marketing for Coles has pledged to make its stores consumer-led and slammed the supermarket industry as “backward” as the Wesfarmers-owned chain embarks on a massive reinvention of its brand. Coles, which has recruited MasterChef judge and restaurant owner George Calombaris to help it lift the quality of food lines, was shifting its attention from dictating to customers to listening to them, marketing director Joe Blundell said.

“Our marketing philosophy is quite simple, which is about listening to customers and making improvements that really matter and moving the bar,” Mr Blundell said. “So when we do something like the value meals campaign it’s because customers have said we enjoy cooking at home but some of us have quite tight budgets and so can you help us out.”

I can’t believe they’re taking such a backward approach and treating their customers with so much respect. Surely it would be far better to ignore what we actualy want and pander to a sterotypical view of what they think we need by using a reality TV star to ram it down our consuming throats.

Can’t they at least bring back Lisa McCune?

I don’t know if my (reasonably successful) little Twitter campaign had any effect, but it looks like Optus has pulled their online sponsorship of 2Day FM’s website, according to mUmBRELLA at least. I’ll be very interested to see what happens now that the show itself has been pulled. I was protesting the fact that there had been no reprimand for the hosts or producers, but now that the show is on hiatus that makes me happy enough. Had nothing changed and Optus continued to sponsor the network I would have cancelled my services after being a customer with them for more than 10 years, we’ll see what happens from here on.