The Borg from Star Trek that is; not Bjorn Borg that tennis pro from the 70s and 80s. Whatever happened to him anyway?
In many ways, the Mommybloggers are a lot like The Borg, from Star Trek fame. In fact this parallel was suggested in a post titled, “The Borg: Mommy Bloggers Assimilate Johnson & Johnson.” Posted on AuburnMedia.com, on November 17, 2008 right in the middle of the whole Motrin flap, and written by Robert French. In the article, Robert alludes to the comparison and includes a significant quote from The Borg mind itself.
“Strength is irrelevant, resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.“
(The bold added was in Robert’s article, btw.) Your culture will adapt to service ours. I’ll take it that Robert implies that the “we” are the Mommybloggers while the “you” (implied) are companies from whom the Mommybloggers buy.
Now in a way, the Mommybloggers, if they are to be compared to The Borg, have it right. Your culture will adapt to service ours. Business serves the consumer. Isn’t that the way it was set-up in the first place? Long ago when the first entrepreneurial Cro-Magnon emerged from a cave somewhere in the south of what is today France, holding in his huge head an idea about an offer that no other Cro-Magnon could refuse, an idea that was intended to serve the betterment of his tribe, wasn’t that the beginning of business? Yes. Business was set up that way in the beginning, but somewhere between that cave dweller and here the idea must have gotten misplaced. Maybe the idea wasn’t as sweet as he thought and he had to add his club into the marketing mix. I say that only because I recall one of the first lessons I learned in business school, “The purpose of the corporation is to enrich the stockholders.” And it shows.
So kudos to the Mommybloggers when they hold a corporation’s “feet to the fire” about lousy service or inferior products. I’m no fan of the selling philosophy of business; the marketing philosophy makes more sense. And Mommybloggers, as well as other factions, help remind companies of that difference.
But they do themselves, and the rest of us, a disservice when they erupt over small things, like the Motrin incident of November 2008, a flap over a promotional video. Such protests, which could be regarded as trivial (and in fact by many were), only serve to diminish their authority as a respected power broker against the corporate, take-it-or-leave-it selling philosophy. When complaining, a well-reasoned, logical argument is more effective than an emotionally charged, mindless, group-think rant.
Now, I’m not saying that Mommybloggers are mindless automatons like The Borg. (Wait a minute. Maybe I should say that. After all, posts of that nature are notorious as link bait and traffic attractors. And they really fill out the comment column, too. 
) But I will say this. Like the fabled Borg, Mommybloggers are a large, unstoppable, inexorable, relentless, overwhelming force furthering their agenda. They, and many other groups in social media, are a definite threat to the way business has been and continues to be done. For any business today, they certainly need to be understood.
