Volume I — PlugVine Philosophy · Chapter 10 of 30
Why Advocacy Is a Risk Your Customers Take For You
Recommending you exposes someone else’s judgment to their own friends’ evaluation.
Advocacy is valuable partly because it’s voluntary and reputational. A person who recommends a business exposes their own judgment to evaluation. That makes advocacy different from a simple transaction, and different from paid promotion that’s been clearly disclosed.
Where this stops short
Businesses must not pressure, repeatedly extract, or design systems that make customers feel responsible for growth.
What this means in practice
The correct response to advocacy is stewardship: notice it, protect it, recognize it appropriately, and remain worthy of it.
The correct response to advocacy is stewardship: notice it, protect it, recognize it appropriately, and remain worthy of it.
Governing Principle
Adapted from The PlugVine Canon, Volume I: PlugVine Philosophy, Chapter 10, part of The PlugVine Canon.