Unmarketing Backlash
Two of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto responded to the Unmarketing piece I posted yesterday (see Unmarketing and the Webful Brand).
Doc Searls seems to be saying that I misunderstood the meaning of “markets are conversations”, generally understood to be one of the core messages of the work:
[from Doc Searls Weblog · Moving past marketing]
Says Stowe Boyd (in a post that has been re-tweeted a bit),
We need to move past the Cluetrain Manifesto, and acknowledge that what people are doing on the web is much, much more than conversing. It’s not just a chat room: it’s an entire culture under development, and the conversation is just the tip of the iceberg.
All due respect to Stowe and the RTers, the Cluetrain Manifesto didn’t say the Web was about conversing. What it said was,
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
These markets are conversations.
If you read down through that original Web page, or the book chapter titled Markets Are Conversations, you’ll find that Cluetrain is not only a brief against marketing in general, but that it’s a book about markets.
Somewhere back there, Jakob Nielsen told me that Cluetrain’s authors had “defected” from marketing, and sided with markets against marketing. Now that the world is thick with “conversation marketing” and worse, I’d say that’s more true than ever.
So, to set the record straight, “Markets are conversations” is a statement about markets. It’s about getting real. Not about getting talkative.
I have to confess that I am confused. Yes, Doc, you say that “markets are conversations” says something about markets, but that it doesn’t say anything about conversing.
Leaving aside my confusion about the zenlike qualities of the “markets are conversations” koan, what I stated could be paraphrased to “We need to move past people’s conceptions of what the Cluetrain Manifesto means, and acknowledge that what people are doing is much, much more that conversing…”
Doc is well known for saying that metaphors are important, and the metaphor of the web as a network of conversations has lodged in the popular consciousness. And I am suggesting that we need to move past that, and realize that what we are up to is not just talking to each other, and not just interacting in markets. The real surprise of the web has been the extramarket activities — like open source movements, and social networks — that have changed the world so dramatically.
So I think its time for new thinking about how companies, products and brands need to affiliate with us, webfully.
Chris Locke left a comment here and on Doc’s post as well:
Stowe, you write…
A more considered response would likely focus on supporting Edglings efforts to create meaningful relationships with others, taking some sort of role in the activities that they participate in online, and affiliating with the aspirations that they have. There is a lot of room in there to explore, but it is all pretty far away from advertising and promotion, which still seems to be the center of gravity for online marketing, at the moment.
Yes, great idea! In 2001, I wrote an entire book on that subject. It’s called Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
Cool. I will have to find a copy and read it. I haven’t heard others talking about gonzo marketing, as such, for a long time.
But both guys never get around to the points I was making:
- For better or worse, the “markets are conversations” metaphor is limiting, and it’s time to move beyond it.
- A large amount of what is motivating us in our web culture is extramarket oriented, and companies will have to rethink what they are trying to do on the web with that foremost in their planning.
