I recently booked a taxi to take my wife to hospital. It arrived on time and the very clever GPS system directed us all the way to the hospital. Unfortunately it took us to the wrong hospital, St Thomas's not Guy's. Still, not a problem, it's ony a mile down the road? "I am afraid our system doesn't allow us to change the destination" said the driver. "You will have to call in and book another taxi from St Thomas's to Guys".

"But its your mistake" I said ( to paraphrase ), "we are not getting out until we get to Guy's".

Eventually, after a slightly frosty journey we made it. "It's not a very good system is it?" I observed. "It's good for us", said the driver "we always know where we are going and we get through more jobs". "Excellent", I replied.

What idiot came up with this system. Sadly, the same idiots that come up with lots of technology. What drives the solution? - internal efficiency, the budget and a list of requirements supplied by the business. What didn't drive the solution was the customer.

If we have one role as marketers it is to use customer insight to come up with ideas that build better brands and businesses: accountants, lawyers, buyers, IT folk, HR departments, salespeople rarely think from a customer perspective. 

So maybe we should stick our oar in more often when we see our Clients ignoring customer insight, not just in advertising and promotions but in IT, customer service, product development and distribution. If we did maybe more people would end up in the right place, at the right time with a lot less foul language.