June 2, 2004
the hughtrain manifesto
1. Been scouring the net and the bookshops and whatnot. Hot marketing word du jour: “Transparency”.
Yep, we’re all f – cking transparent now. From the guy who cleans your pool to General F – cking Motors. Rock on.
2. “Advertising is Dead.” Yep, bastards like me are no longer going to try to sell you anything. You heard it here first.
3. “Blogs cure cancer”. Yep, so now you can go tell that expensive chemotherapist of yours to go f – k himself.
4. “Alternative Advertising” is really hot right now. So instead of advertising on TV or People Magazine like a normal person, you show your boss you’re “with it” by hiring one of these ‘Alternative’ advertising agencies and getting their army of freelance college girls to smear their pert, young breasts with your company’s product and march around the campus a’giggling. Hopefully “word of mouth” is generated, the media “picks it up” and suddenly you’re no longer referred to as “Cube Boy” around the office.
5. We’re all about “empowerment” these days. We have great need to be constantly reminded by the brands we buy into that we’re not the flaccid nonentities we spent most of our lives believing we were. So instead of it saying “Powered by Blogger” on your website (a perfectly reasonable and succinct phrase, in my opionion), you now have “I power Blogger”. So now people are going to laugh at you less. Right.
6. What makes the hi-tech/internet/dotcom client attractive to the ad business isn’t their actual products, it’s their customers.
What is attractive is the idea of selling products made by smart people (e.g. computers, iPods etc) to other smart people (e.g. techies, entrepreneurs, college profs). As opposed to selling products made by smart people (baked beas, candy bars, soap powder) to dumb people (welfare mothers, redneck sports fans), the latter being 90% of what the ad business does to pay its bills.
Selling to people of your own caliber is generally a far more rewarding way to spend one’s time than selling to people you wouldn’t want to invite into your own house. Which is why the best agencies get to work on those accounts, and why hi-tech accounts get more than their fair share of advertising and marketing accolades.
7. We seem overly fond of “Zen” imagery these days. Whenever possible we like to design our company logos to resemble sumi ink drawings from 17th century Zen Masters and whatnot.
We like Zen because it has all that comforting, calming, meditative, spiritual schtick without the insistence that we believe in anything too specific or counter-intuitive. Unlike say, Christianity or Islam.
So if your company cannot come up with its own spiritual schtick, Zen is the easiest “big one” to appropriate without appearing too tacky.
8. The future of advertising is… never using the words “future of advertising” in conversation. Don’t even ask.
9. Regular readers will have heard me mention The Cluetrain Manifesto: “All markets are conversations.“
OK, I’ll up the ante.
The Hughtrain Manifesto: “All products are conversations.“
Again, you heard it here first. Heh.
"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter.
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
I hope you don’t mind — I’ve placed a link through to your site from my blog at
http://www.adagency.blogspot.com
Groovy, Dean. Thanks =)
Brands are feeded through unique and individual experiences that go beyond the functional benefit; These experiences differ from each person*, they belong to those who feel them — not the ones that provide them. Therefore: Brands belong to people, they belong to the consumers because they’re the ones who give an intangible meaning to them. The brand manager or marketer that does not understand this self-evident fact is on the wrong path. As Kevin Roberts (CEO Saatchi & Saatchi) pointed out: Trustmarks don’t belong to companies. Trustmarks belong to the people. I own Fast Company magazine. I want it every month. I want to read it, to take it apart, and to spread it around to my friends. The editors of Wallpaper don’t own that magazine. I own Wallpaper. It’s not theirs, it’s mine — and they’d better not fuck with me.”
True to a point, Hidden.… but it goes further than that. i’ll blog about it in a day or so
Check out what product designers are up these days. For years they have been seeing products as way to interact with the consumer. Where consumer really becomes not such a suitable expression.
They are thinking about the product as part of the conversation and doing it, too. There’s some wonderful work by Dunne+Raby at the Royal College of Art in London and also interesting stuff happening at Tisch in New York, and Japan and Italy and it’s all there.
Take your concepts one step further… market other people’s products and services and reap the benefits and rewards. Or just fail miserably. It’s like a fundraiser for yourself.
Coke GPS
Dear Corporations of the world:
We’re worn out from your intrusive advertising, and our constant efforts to avoid it.
WE PROPOSE A PARTNERSHIP. Rather than sell us your visions and dreams, you become the sponsors of our dreams. Put some of your budget into supporting our projects — we will appreciate your support and pass along the positive word-of-mouth. Also, by piggy-backing on our projects (film festivals, gallery shows, websites, parties, etc.) you will access our friends and associates. We can show you how effective and efficient this can be.
This “patron advertising” is a more effective way to build relationships with influencers and their networks. Its also a way to change our perception of your brand.
Think about it.
The Urban Pioneer Project
http://www.urbanpioneerproject.com
Hugh,
Fernando Flores created an entire business process theory around the concept that “All work of any interesting level of complexity is conversation.” He then built a formal methodology for describing workflows as conversations between customers and providers, along with specific subflow templates, etc. At first it seems strange, but it works BETTER than magic, because the inner workings of magic are obscured.
All hail the Hughtrain Manifesto!
Mike… wow, that sounds really interesting… got a URL for it? Don’t e-mail it– post it here so others can see it
A client of mine is all into Fernando Flores and other thinkers of that genre. It’s all __very__ interesting stuff if you like to think. It makes all the cluetrain/gluetrain stuff look pretty amateurish.
Here’s an FC article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/21/flores.html
Hugh,
The Fast Company article Gahlord mentions doesn’t speak directly to the workflow theory. Here’s another one that goes into more detail:
http://cne.gmu.edu/modules/workflow/workflow-coordination.html
Take a look and let me know what you think.
Mike, Gahlord, thanks for the info. Very interesting stuff =)
Yeah, after a while Cluetrain gets a bit… weary. It’s too techie-centric. As if RSS is going to solve your company’s $120 million loss last quarter. Right.
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