So one reason that it (maybe) doesn't add much is that everyone knows it is tue, but doesn't want to think about it.
It's a thought-terminating cliché.
"If you are the customer, then you are not the product."
This is false (many contradictory examples show that you can be both customer and product), and so the original quote itself is false.
http://imgur.com/532xPbd
Note that "If you're not the customer, you're the product" is true, but "If you are the customer, you're not the product" is false.
Your reasoning would hold if the categories were mutually exclusive, but, as you noted, they aren't.
So one reason that it (maybe) doesn't add much is that everyone knows it is tue, but doesn't want to think about it.