With consumers having ever more choice, corporations must invest more and more in courting public opinion. In Britain 93 per cent of companies now allocate some of their marketing budget to good causes. Shell launched a 15 million ad campaign, in March of this year, attesting to its social and environmental awareness. And such efforts must be kept up. Politicians, too, must stay close to their customers.
Ideology competes with ice-cream.
Unless politicians provide the same levels of service in hospitals and schools, the same quick response to our concerns and make the same effort to meet our needs as do Tesco and Sainsbury's, they will forfeit our custom. Corporations, realising how fickle our vote is, have to become even more conscientious, responsible and accountable, or face our defection. A fundamental change is happening. As the century turns, politics as we have long known it has grown too old to rejuvenate. Politics is dead - long live the consumer.