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Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
Christopher Locke, one of the co-conspirators of the best seller The Cluetrain Manifesto, has again set off to teach companies how to talk, not just offer lip-service, to their customers. In Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices, Locke takes on the myths and monuments of marketing armed new ideas and a razor sharp wit. Buckle up. Hold on. Mr. Locke is going to take you on a wild ride to the new world of marketing.
While the book's frenzied style will be compared to that of Hunter S. Thompson, I view the book instead as the first real book written in hyperlink-style. Jumping all over the map and all over the mind in search of gonzo marketing. Scrolling from idea to author to tactic and back again around the horn again.
Locke devotes a portion of the book to a refresher course in The Cluetrain Manifesto?s teachings: Markets are conversations. The Web is a micromarket made up of individuals. Your mass market mind tricks won't work on us. Gonzo Marketing picks up from there with a deeper examination of how companies must understand how micromarkets operate.
Locke accomplishes this by giving readers a detailed examination of the evolution of current marketing thought. The experts and evangelists range from Marshall McLuhan to Noam Chomsky to Sergio Zyman and Seth Godin. I stopped counting books and articles Locke mentions or dissects when it hit 32. Gonzo Marketing is quick to point out when grand ideas, like Godin's "Permission Marketing," were nothing more than underhanded tactics to send us spam.
What Locke pushes forward instead is this notion of gonzo marketing. Gonzo marketing "is marketing from the market's perspective. It is not a set of tricks to be used against us. Instead, it's a set of tools to achieve what we want for a change." No more tricks. No more schemes. No more mass market messages.
Gonzo Marketing also explains the evolution of the micromarket. Mass production created the need for mass markets. But globalization has been cutting the mass market into smaller and smaller pieces for many years now. The rapid proliferation of the Internet has only increased the growth of these micromarkets. While only global giants were once exposed to the power of micromarkets now companies of every shape and size must learn to deal with them.
The bad news for companies is that micromarkets are here to stay. As Locke puts it, "The web is a non-stop planet-spanning celebration. And we ain't goin' back in the box." The good news is that companies can be active participants in these micromarkets. But Locke isn't talking about "hashbrowned or refried databases" but instead "genuinely social social groupings." Micromarkets are "collections of people, communities joined by shared interests." And the big catch is that you need to belong to these groups to have a conversation with them.
This all sounds very 1960s commune-esk. And some readers may quickly label Locke's ideas as being as foolhardy as those he criticizes himself. But the evidence of micromarkets in action are all around. Internet chat rooms allow micromarkets to flourish and communicate like never before. Interested in rare coinage from the ancient world? There's a micromarket and somewhere people are talking about it, and telling people where to buy the best Tiberius Aureus Tribune penny. Online personal Web logs, also called blogs, allow micromarkets to share ideas, discuss new products, and to speak their mind in a way that traditional journalism never allowed for. Think, Oprah Winfrey's Book Club x 50 million and growing. Get the picture
Locke points to companies like Ford Motor Company, Delta Airlines, Intel, and Bertelsmann who are already reaching out to micromarkets. In February 2000 Ford announced that it was giving each of its 350,000 employees a computer and Internet access, and it didn't take long for those other companies to follow suit. Sure, Ford wants to put technology in its people's hands, but "the real deal is that Ford has unleashed 350,000 independent and genuinely intelligent agents to fan out online and listen carefully." First people start listening, then they start talking.
Gonzo Marketing doesn't tell companies they can't market to customers -- but that they need to radically rethink how they communicate. Before the automobile, the transcontinental railroad was the only easy way to get to the west coast. Before the Internet, mass marketing was the only easy way you could communicate on a global scale. And the railroads of old were just as inefficient and costly as the bloated marketing budgets of today.
Where as Cluetrain described the disease in detail, Gonzo Marketing concludes with a cure for companies to begin using. While Locke often sounds anti-big business, he notes that it is these larger companies who have the best advantage in making the early "transition from traditional marketing to more intimate micromarket relationships." They can begin to experiment with gonzo marketing by skimming a little bit off the top of their massive advertising budgets. Companies need to value their employee?s individual interests, and to find ways to nurture those interests. Allow people to go out and be ambassadors for your company, even if their interests have nothing to do with what the company is selling. People are more likely to talk to people with whom they share common interests than to corporate talking heads that share no common ground. Think about it.
Gonzo Marketing makes for great reading because it gets the gears in your mind turning. Everyone says their employees are their best advertisers. What if you really put that kind of attitude into action? Taken individually, micromarkets may seem insignificant, but collectively they have the power to move mountains. Locke concludes Gonzo Marketing with instructions for those pioneers that want to make first contact with micromarkets: "Hook up, connect, co-create, procreate. Redeploy. Foment joy. Brothers in arms, sisters of Avalon, champions of the world get to work."
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Nothing like irritation to inspire me to buy a product, eh?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From the /. article:
Whether micromarketing of this sort really takes off will depend chicken-and-egg-like on whether a few companies escape being annoying and actually get people interested in what they have to offer.
Wonder if someone at X-10 is reading this...or reading the book?
The best way for marketing to be effective on me as a consumer is to... wait for it... show me products I am actually interested in.
Micro/macro/viral marketing call all suck it as far as I'm concerned. Show me things I have even a remote chance of buying and watch as advertising becomes effective for the first time in it's history.
Wakka wakka wakka!
Yes, If you want to be paranoid, you can call this mind control. Or you can give some other politically correct name and feel better about it.
But in any case what has happened with the internet is that the monkeys have escaped from their cages, so to speak. This is what the concept of micromarketing has tapped into, but it is more global than that.
This is because marketing is not just for business. It is also used for political agendas.
Marketing tries to aggregate people into masses. This is because it is easier to deal with the demographics of large groups of people. Also, large masses of people are easier to manipulate with images and emotions such as fear, sex, etc.
If you cut the visceral reactions to various images out of the loop, then there is a problem. Then you end up with dealing with individuals with individual thoughts and ideas and experiences. It is far easier to market to a million people as a mass market that to market to a million independent thinking individuals.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Man, you don't want much, do you?
Well, maybe not you per se, but a vocal segment of the slashdot community. There's something fundamental missing for the advertiser. Something simple... maybe he should ask you what you're interested in. That might be a little less annoying than current methods, and allows you to control what information they recieve.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Of course Disney own Gonzo...
- but they're so afraid of Hunter S. Thompson, they'll never enforce it.
Any journo who shoots his own typewriter is OK by me 8-)
All these principles make sense and on paper work great. However, it's been tried before - it was called viral marketing (and don't tell me that employees of .com-s in 98-early '00 were not enthusiastic about their jobs and true embassadors, I was living in the bay area at the time and could feel it from every friend I had). Most companies found that in order for the "viral" part to work they had to give away a service/product that costs them money for free. Later, they started charging for it and that's when the real test came and in many cases the virally added consumers that came for the freebies left. The only viral service I can think of that I still use now that it isn't operating on a loss is Snapfish. I like their processing and posting (good for overseas parents) and this way I don't have to remember to pick up my photos. Still, if I found out that they were way more expensive than other alternatives I'd drop them in a heartbeat. Lucky for me they're priced well.
Privacy advocates are up in arms about this kind of research, but these people have to get it through their heads that these companies don't give a fuck who you are. To them you're just a number.
And this is precisely why I am up in arms about that kind of research: because, to them, I am "just a number." Companies don't care that I am am human with notions of privacy and dignity. I'll take my privacy and dignity over someone else's notion of "what I might want to buy from them" every single time. To companies trying to make money, my privacy and dignity are barriers to their profit-making abilities. What gives them the right to take it?
And if you argue that people have no privacy, then I reserve the right to clandestinely take photographs of you masturbating and send those photos to everyone who knows you, including your employer, potential employers, and your extended family.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
So, we had: people at company -> communication/marketing dept -> you
And the dream is: people at company -> marketing dept -> people at company -> you
Which is best for all of us, as it puts social responsibility and accountibility back in the hands of a community (ie, community of exployees) rather than the all-or-nothing super-hygenic communication that comes out of board-meeting-inspired mass ad campaigns. Note that I am not saying that the form and message of that communication won't still go through the marketing dept and PR-sanitizers, but for the most part, humans want to talk to humans; not answering machines, billboards, or any other one-to-many communication platform.
I mean, at the end of the day, we all work for companies, and I don't believe we're all evil. We are just capable of intrusive or annoying behaviour far better when our names and individuality is 'trimmed' from the communication. People are very very cynical today about advertising, but we have to understand that we all, to some extent, depend on it. The goal is to balance the needs of the consumer (to allow them to distinguish between marketing and personal communication) while bringing marketing more inline with the types of communication that we actually enjoy and participate in every day.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The really scary parts of marketing are that:
We (geeks) are good at it.
It's fun !
Occasionally I've got involved in marketing (I can handle it, honest, I've just got a bit of a cold at the moment). The surprising ease of it and the ease by which it's possible to not only do it, but to get it right , makes me even more convinced that Scott Adam's view is right (marketing people are those who can't play piano well enough for a brothel). If you're going to play ball with consumerism, then you need to look at marketing. The fact that the field is full of extremely stupid people without the brains of a HR droid shouldn't put you off making your own marketing work right.
#ob_karma_whore
Paco Underhill's book Why We Buy, is a great intro to common sense applied to retail marketing. Much off it works for e-comm sites too.
There was a lot of excitement around "The Cluetrain Manifesto" when it was first published.
Personally, I found it to be similar in many ways to "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People": a couple of useful observations and good ideas, wrapped up in many pages of useless blather, pseudo-religion, annoying condescension, and obviousity.
Has anyone seen any effect, anywhere in the world or the world's economy, resulting from the publication of "Cluetrain"? From the perspective of late 2001, that is, with all the dotbombs now fully buried, not 1999.
sPh
The link is missing, where is the rite answers at?
There are real economic trends that support "Gonzo Marketing". Much of it will come true. But this kind of bad writing isn't helping. One trend is that everyone is this future will be a writing. Hopefully MacLaughlin takes some time between now and then to learn how to write effectively.
Locke wrote the book, but I want to hear Demosthenes take on the book and subject before I buy it.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Which makes it just as useful as Slashdot!
sulli
RTFJ.
Oh yeh, I forgot, Eric Raymond. Well, carry on then I guess.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
this is ripped (poorly) from:1 .html
http://www.uakron.edu/noden/strats/strats9/strat9
This is really two topics in one post -- sorry.
;)
1) The point of grammar-based prejudice is a good one! I think online communications (email, message boards, chat rooms, IM, multiplayer games, etc) actually exacerbate the situation. Since text is often the only clue we have about other people, I end up making a lot of assumptions about others by their writing style. Assumptions about age and education, primarily. The fact that my assumptions prove correct more often than not strengthens this instinct. But is this another form of prejudice?
2) While I enjoyed the test, it always aggravates me when people equate salary with success/prestige. I've just finished my Ph.D. in physics, and am looking at jobs now. There appears to be a major fork in the road, where I need to decide to go into industry or acadamia. I could be challenged and happy either way, but it's a difficult decision. My feeling is to stay in academics, because I feel a strong affinity with the whole academic process of teaching, research, and open sharing of knowledge. But jobs in the industry typically pay two to three times more than academic jobs, just starting out. And later on the academic salaries quickly asymptote while salaries in the industry have practically no limit. From a purely financial perspective, the decision is absurdly obvious.
So my future salary is not determined by my grammar, grades, or whatever. It's determined by my priorities. I would say "greed/ethics ratio", but that's too smug. So I won't say that.
I also aggravates me when people talk about intelligence like it is some kind of metric. I personally don't think that intelligence can be measured in any meaningful way. Grammar, intelligence, and salaries are not like inches, centimeters, and cubits. They are related more like sweetness, color, and temperature of food are.
Whew! done ranting. That felt good.
marketer: "gonzo marketing"? what the hell is that? wow, this guy must be some kind of "guru" on the "bleeding edge". i want to be sure i'm up to speed on the latest techniques in this "new economy" world. gosh, maybe us marketing guys will finally have an impressive array of lingo and abbreviations like the programmers do. woo hoo!
sigs are for suckers
* You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You go up to her and say, "Hi, I'm great in bed, how about it?".
That's Direct Marketing.
* You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You give your friend a $10. She goes up and says "Hi, my friend over there is great in bed, how about it?".
That's Advertising.
* You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You somehow mop up her mobile number. You call, talk to her a while and then say "I am great in bed, how about it?"
That's Tele-Marketing.
* You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You recognize her. You walk up to her, refresh her memory and get her to laugh and giggle and then suggest, "I am great in bed, how about it?".
That's Customer Relationship Management.
* You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You walk around playing Mr. Busy. You put on your best smile and walk around being Mr. Congenial. You stand straight, you talk soft and smooth, you open the door for the ladies, you smile like a dream, you set an aura around you playing the Mr. Gentleman and then you move up to the girl and say, "Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?".
That's Hard Selling.
* You go to a party, you see an attractive girl across the room. SHE COMES OVER and says, "Hi, I hear you're great in bed, how about it?"
Now THAT is the power of Branding.
James Burke has already done that sort of thing, in The Pinball Effect and The Knowledge Web -- any time a subject in the book (histories of technology, effectively the companion books to TLC's Connections 2 and Connections 3 series respectively) has references in other parts of the book, he provides the page number and an id for that reference in the margin, so you can switch gears and see where the same invention or event had other effects described in the book instead of just following the text in order or having to check the index to cross-reference the subject.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
>
> "Gonzo" is not a method of filming porn. It has no meaning specific to porn. It is just an adjective roughly equivalent to "outrageous" (gonzo [dictionary.com]).
Google query for "Gonzo porn"
I do believe you owe the original poster an apology.
Though your point - "outrageous" - is equally well-taken.
For those at work and unable to check out the links, it appears that "gonzo porn" is to "tasteful erotica", as "goatse.cx" is to "national geographic".
You forget that Raymond was/is both a programmer and a project maintainer. When you read his technical opinions you can tell whether or not he is cluefull.
And none of us needs him to tell us who's clueless, its fairly obvious. Perhaps the people be so labeled may regard such a statement as a flame, where others look upon it as merely accurate.
The reason anybody listens to him is because he's good at explaining what a lot of us already know- especially to people who dont.
Obviously someone didn't read my comment before moderating.
Actually, a few years ago... and before the blitz of annoying adds, X10 devices were often subjects of slashdot stories. Cool little devices that do various neat things. And they weren't that expensive. Gadgeteer's delight.
Now, it seems that the only time X10 is mentioned on slashdot its about their annoying adds.
You tell me. Is moving a perfect customer base (gadget-loving geeks) from a focus on a product to a focus on an advertising campaign all that good of a move?
We've all heard that the phrase "there's no such thing as bad publicity." I'm sure there are industries where this is true. However, I can't see how the message "avoid buying this product, whatever it is" is really going to help hardware sales.
You'll have to trust me on this one. I'm at work and can't surf to a valid link, but having the name 'Gonzo' in real life tends to help when finding new terms for your name.
but it's a moot point.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty