A new kind of lobbying

This begins with dorky confession. Regular readers will recall that in my attempts to lose some weight I tried to do the 10,000 steps per day program. I bought that pedometer at GNC, and somehow I'm on their mailing list.

The weird thing is today, I get this in my email box.

This is a business asking me to lobby the government on behalf of one of their products.

I'm trying to think, but I really don't recall ever having been asked to do that before. To me this suggests an unusual relationship between business and consumer.

Now, granted, most of the GNC customers I know would be happy to help GNC out. Like a hobby shop's customers would rally around the hobby shop, something about GNC seems to inspire loyalty in the select few who consider it a store for people like them. So it will probably be successful.

But as an outsider, I find GNC sending me that email to be sort of strange.

CC