Today I had an interesting experience when going to our neighborhood shop called the Amish Market. The Amish Market differentiates itself from the other Manhattan supermarkets by offering some more non-standard products, it’s cozy interior and friendlier staff.

So I was surprised to see protestors in front of the entrance advising (e.i yelling) to stop buying at Amish Market and handing out papers with the Why. I took the paper, read it and thought…OMG this is not good, lets do better! And then I realized… the message only focussed on why it was wrong for me to shop at Amish but no word about where I should go in stead! Puzzled I asked one of the protestors what he would recommend. The protestor was even more puzzled me asking him something and had to ask one of his buddies to get the answer. Unfortunately his buddy had not much of an idea either. Got some names of other super markets but none of them are in our neighborhood.

There I was, knowing there is something better but no idea where. Truthfully, I entered the Amish market and decided to figure out where to shop in the future at a later stage.

As with many things life, including brands and technologies it is so easy to point out all that is wrong or you feel you do much better. As believers it is even more easy to get totally fixated on that message completely forgetting the purpose: make consumers switch! Unless you give consumers smooth and instant access to something better and something they can believe in switching turns out very difficult.