July 23, 2006
i can smell a lost soul
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I usually agree with everything my friend, Doc Searls says.
Not this time.
I’m not saying he’s necessarily wrong, it’s just that I’m not quite getting it. Yet.
Yes, it would be nice to think that one day we won’t need to market anything. Sellers would not need to interrupt, buyers would not need to be interrupted. The internet would seamlessly do the job for us, finding out the customer’s intention first, and then finding the product that suits said intention the best, in that order. And Larry, Serge and their contemporaries would be even richer than they are now. Fair enough.
And yet, I’m not so sure. There’s so much grey area between [A] existing markets and [B] markets that almost exist. And you could say the art of marketing is turning the latter into the former. A market is not a fait accompli.
Right now there are millions if people who currently have zero intention of ever drinking a glass of Stormhoek [a winery I have a small stake in], who if I have my way, will be happily drinking a glass of Stormhoek sometime in the next couple of years. If so, then that, My Friends, is marketing. It has nothing to do with their current intention. It has nothing to do with what Doc calls The Intention Economy. It has everything to do with marketing, or whatever you call that which I do for a living.
That being said, another part of me hopes Doc is right. This is not because of some kind of post-Cluetrain koolade-drinking on my part, however much I revere that book. This is because I would so ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT if my clients and I did not have to “market” our wares, but instead the internet somehow provided us with instantly-automated, intention-economy profit. It would sure beat working for a living.
Instead of waiting for that day to arrive [it would be nice if it did, but I’m not holding my breath], I would recommend instead, fighting like hell to create something that offers [A] value for money and [B] stories other people like telling.
And if the post-Cluetrain internet makes that job easier, Rock On.
“Truly free” markets must be the places where false consciousness withers away. Sounds nice, but Ive never seen that happen on this planet…
Every market I’ve been to has featured sellers telling stories, buyers taking these stories in to some extent while watching where other buyers are swarming.
So, agreed, seems logical that effective story telling will still have a place, even in the Age of Aquarious 2.0.
Why all the huhub lately about how marketing sucks? I love Doc, but I think Doc has said [something like] “sales is real; marketing is bullshit.” That’s like saying “orgasms are real — and sex is bullshit.” When in reality, one is a means to an end — the other is the end. Both are fun.
People like a little foreplay. It’s the romance that makes them feel special. Marketing’s fun. It’s the promise of the world class customer experience. And that promise, if delivered seductively enough, can actually enhance the experience.
No, he’s wrong. As I commented when it first appeared, it’s another classic example of people labelling promotion as marketing — a mistake that even marketing departments make.
Intelligent marketing is essential, advertising isn’t. Indeed, I would argue that in the post Cluetrain world that while it will be easier and cheaper to do, it’s going to be harder than ever to do it successfully.
huh?
How do the “millions” of people actually get to know that what they 1) need 2) desire is actually available if someone doesn’t TELL them its available? Will the culture change so that people actually show some initiative and bother to go looking?
Marketing is NOT supposed to be mere advertising no — but crumbs — it is still a message that people need to hear so they can choose if they really do 1)need it and 2)desire it. They are not necessarily interested in anything they do not yet know exists.
Its a reciprocal arrangement too isn’t it? — information sharing — give n take — all that etc. Thing is the whole “Hard Sell” bit gets in the way of that message and leaves the “millions” cynical.
and so marketing on the internet will just come across as spam anyway unless it comes with touchy-feely ‘we understand you’ stuff I guess. Once people feel like they’re not going to be conned they might show a little interest and decide then if they 1) need it and 2) desire it. Thing is… to make money .. you kinda have to shout something to the effect of “I’M HERE! F**** BUY ME! etc before they look up and listen.
*sigh* — it’s all so hard!
“People like a little foreplay. It’s the romance that makes them feel special. Marketing’s fun. It’s the promise of the world class customer experience. And that promise, if delivered seductively enough, can actually enhance the experience.”
I have no idea what Doc said, but I doubt he hit the nail as cleanly as Harry does here. What Doc and the other members of the ‘a world without marketing is the world for me’ crowd miss is that people WANT to be marketed to! They want to be fawned over. They don’t WANT everything instantly. They want to comparison-shop. They want to be, as Harry perfectly states it, ‘romanced’.
Do they want marketing to become an obstacle and intrusion in their lives? Of course not, but they definitely don’t want it to go away.
Ditto, good points all 3. * My first-year marketing students (supposedly media & marketing savvy Gen-Y demographic) still almost all (95%) think marketing is advertising or sales. They also say they are immune to marketing (as they sit there with identical iPod earbuds around their necks) until we dig a bit deeper during the semester and they realize the fan sites, myspace, band events, music videos, etc. all have them on their marketing radar. * I’m also a (Gen-X demographic) marketing consultant and many new clients also fall into this frame of thinking. My favourite kind of statement from them is: ‘Thank goodness we got that event sponsorship taken care of, otherwise I’d have to pay for marketing!’ * D-oh! :-p * I just have to giggle at all these breathless-2.0-types who (unlike Hugh) don’t see that their blogs, consulting gigs, groovy events … are all marketing. * Marketing at its best is brilliant storytelling and great two-way communication. The stories may change, the tellers may be new, lingo evolves, and the media may be bleeding-edge, but it’s still marketing.
The post-Cluetrain era implies there’s no more Cluetrain.com? The site is down, with a nasty hosting company message.
Hugh,
There is a gaping void between the cluetrain talk and the cluetrain walk.
cluetrain.com has been down for ages, wikipedia states:
- The Cluetrain website was declared a Read-Only Landmark and is currently off-line
This has to be the most non-cluetrain piece of cluetrainness ever penned.
How, dear cluetrainers, are we supposed to get clued up on the cluetrain if it is off-line?
This long tail is tangled.
“I would recommend instead, fighting like hell to create something that offers [A] value for money and [B] stories other people like telling.”
Great quote, reminds of me a thought from somewhere that the universe offers abundance and scarcity is created, or imagined, or something like that.
Marketing will never die unless every consumer can see, simulateously, every potential product and service available to them and instantly discern it’s value to them. (on re-reading the post this is mentioned…Hugh says, “…instead the internet somehow provided us with instantly-automated”)
Logically, how would a consumer know my product exists without marketing? Even if I only have to tell one person and they tell one, etc… I have still had to market to that one person.
Marketing may become about building relationships…but it’s still marketing.
hugh: couldn’t agree more.
“truly free” markets means a million conversations going on inside everyone’s head.
“marketing” means coming up with intelligent, creative, and persuasive reasons to sing clearly & melodically to your audience from within that cacophony, and managing to still be heard & make a connection.
these days it may also mean: email, SEO, SEM, blogs, message boards, t-shirts, smart PR, market research, usability studies, website analytics, contests, funny taglines & error messages… and cartoons
note: it ALWAYS means making a good product/service which matches user needs to create benefits. however, that doesn’t mean discovery happens automatically. when we get personalization & search engines / RSS readers that are that good, it will be time for me to retire.
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
I’m with Harry & Mark absolutely. People love themselves. So you don’t sell them product; you sell them a little bit of themselves and they get hooked.
Harry Joiner, I think I love you! In one small post you have eliminated the need for all 500 gazillion marketing books currently on the B&N shelves. Yes, it really IS that simple: (1) Give people something nice. (2) Make it a promise of something even better. (3) Deliver that “something even better.”
The missing piece, however, is that the marketing folks have done a bad job of marketing (see 1 – 3 above) to the delivery folks that, um, (a) the product must be AT LEAST as cool as the marketing and (b) the marketing folks could help that happen, if they were allowed in the loop.
Unfortunately, “the market for something to believe in,” is still too gullible. The help wanteds here for marketing/sales are full of blind ads looking for “closers” who want “potential six figure incomes” yet the ads don’t state what they’ll be selling (‘cept for a couple mortgage originators).
Selling things people want to believe in (but ultimately don’t) is still an extremely profitable business. The harder it is to sell whatever, the better it pays. That’s why most insurance offers HUGE commissions.
Perhaps my favorite discovery the past couple of years is Pandora. I love it. Everyone I introduce it to loves it.
Yet most times I mention it to someone new — even musicians who play our shop — people have never heard of it. I find that incredible.
I know I now look for new music by using Pandora. I know what I like, it suggests songs/artists that share the same DNA. That’s how I get to sample hundreds of artists, some of whom I’ll buy.
What’s the wine industry (or food or shoes or machine tools) version of Pandora?
And once you create it, how do you get people to use it?
Hugh and friends,
The context for that piece is a tutorial I’m giving today titled Open Source Clue Training: How to Market to People Who Hate Marketing. This is at OSCON: the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. As I said in that piece, I’m looking for feedback and advice. Not offering corollaries to Cluetrain (which is back up, by the way… sorry about that). I’m not talking about marketing rental cars here, or wine, or toothpaste or consumer electronics. I’m talking about conversing, relating, obtaining the interest of, and selling stuff to, techies. More specifically, techies whose metier is open source.
Remember I’m writing this essay for Linux Journal. Our core readership is approximately 100% technical.
These people, on the whole, dislike and distrust marketing. When they look for products, they want unvarnished truth and facts, as fast and directly as possible. When they make products, they want those products to be as useful as possible.
Too often what they are told to make, by their own marketing organizations, turns out to be something that customers don’t want, or is off-base one way or another. There is general agreement among technology creators that many mistakes could be avoided if makers and users were in closer touch. But the “strategic” imperatives of marketing often get in the way. Because strategic stuff tends to be detached. In more ways than one.
In many companies it is not only bad form for the actual makers of technology to talk or relate with the actual users; it is also bad form for marketing to do the same. Because that’s sales’ job. Sales people are the ones who touch the customer. Not marketing. And certainly not engineers. The world has changed, but the bureaucratic templates haven’t.
The engineers themselves are also conflicted. To a large degree, they like their isolation.
Yet nobody really is isolated. That’s the key point here. What do you do in a world where everybody is essentially zero distance from everybody else?
I’ll cop to being hyperbolic in the way I put some of the points I made in the piece. But The System is either breaking or broken, by the fact that The Net removes distance. It obviates org charts. It makes many “strategic” decisions ludicrous when practical alternatives are beyond abundant, and inherently unmanageable.
Too much of marketing still acts as if the Net isn’t there, or has not caused profound and utter disintermediation of what marketing did for decades. That’s why many techies hate it.
“All technology trends start with technologists,” Mark Andreessen (creator of Mosaic, the ancestor of Firefox) said.
Whatever marketing becomes will start, I believe, as a technology trend.
And I’m still looking for what I asked for in that piece: help with my assignment, which is coming up with stuff to say, and teach, this afternoon here in Portland.
Doc,
I’m all for hyperbole, but I don’t think it helpsed your argument here since there seems to be a confusion of various people’s definitions of terms.
“Too much of marketing still acts as if the Net isn’t there, or has not caused profound and utter disintermediation of what marketing did for decades. That’s why many techies hate it.”
Absolutely correct in my opinion.
“Yet nobody really is isolated. That’s the key point here. What do you do in a world where everybody is essentially zero distance from everybody else?”
Yes. Our geographical separation may have been eliminated (though that is only for those on the right side of the digital divide and who choose to participate), but even then there is surely a separation based upon mindsets, worldviews, acculturation and biases?
“But The System is either breaking or broken, by the fact that The Net removes distance. It obviates org charts. It makes many “strategic” decisions ludicrous when practical alternatives are beyond abundant, and inherently unmanageable.”
Help! I have no idea what you’re saying here.
Doc
You have really nailed it for me when you say
“Whatever marketing becomes will start, I believe, as a technology trend.”
I come from the geek/tech side of the world and used to think so far that it is weird or in fact even abominous for a someone from this side of he world to talk about what marketing would become.
But more and more I see that it is the folks from here who would be shaping up marketing.
Btw I read your OSCON post it is fantastic, I have a question why you have’nt include the ideas of pinko marketing from Tara who is just developed pinko as extension of cluetrain.
Also you could read some of my thoughts on Pinko through in a kind of conceptual framework here http://rajan.wordpress.com/2006/03/27/brilliant-tara-and-pinko-marketing/
Rajan
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