A Pause in the Action....

I'll be getting back to the rest of the NOTES chapter after this short interlude. I'm tired of waiting to see whether or not Amazon.com will decide to run my little review of the book, so I'm blogging it here...

Take off Your Tie. Heck, Take Off All Your Clothes--Marketing's Having a Party.

If you've had a feeling that there's something rotten in the land of marketing, but you haven't quite been able to identify the source of the stench--Gonzo Marketing is for you.

What's rotten is marketing as usual. No surprise to many, the tactics employed by most organizations to woo customers today aren't working and can't work, because these companies have failed to get engaged--to participate down-and-dirty-style--in the incredible expanding marketplace better known as the Internet. The bottom line: Because of the Internet's impact on modern society, broadcast marketing and mass media--techniques honed for an entirely different and nearly extinct era and audience--don't reach consumers anymore. At least not within the winding, twisting landscape of the Net.

As Locke describes: "Mass production, whether of goods or information, has always depended on broadcast marketing in which markets are viewed as top-down targets from the lofty vantage point of long-established power and control."

So why get naked? Because command and control is crumbling… The barriers are coming down… We the people ARE the people. And business has no choice now but to recognize, to accept, and to embrace.

"The promise of the net is the promise of humanity coming together, seeing itself for the first time, as we saw ourselves from the moon more than three decades ago, saw the breathtaking blue planet spinning out there. Out here," Locke writes. "This time it's much more intimate. Maybe we can't see the faces yet, but we can read the words and begin to sense the lives behind them."

In Gonzo, we get a wisp of what business might be like--what the world might be like--as the Internet moves from mainstream to inherent. And a refreshing wisp it is. Through the Gonzo Model, organizations can join the marketplace and converse with customers, form amazing bonds and a commonality of purpose they never believed possible. No more shouting at us, barraging us, insulting us. But talking with us. Getting to know us. And amazing new opportunities exist within these new 'micromarkets' for organizations ready to move past denial and take the plunge.

I for one say, hurray for Gonzo. I'm already at the party waiting. Come on in. I'd like to get to know you.

I'll be the one with the lampshade on my head.