Hmmm, I know what you are getting at Jeneane, but I am not sure how much I subscribe to the One True Voice theory.

I too play the silly game of pretending to be somebody else for money - and it is in that situation that part of the problem of voice lies. By assuming different voices during the course of a day I am tacitly admitting that I am not being true to myself (although I may be true to someone else's self!). The idea that there is, deep down there, one Voice that expresses the self perfectly is therefore tempting. It is a protection from the guilt of not telling the truth instilled from childhood.

If I consider the situations you mentioned, then there is a core within all these activities. However, I believe that my reactions and my voice are different. If all social mores and restrictions are ripped away, I believe I would emit a sound much like an over-lunched belch. Truthful, but not pretty in mixed company.

But before going any further it may be worth considering whether there is a cultural context here. There is a tendency among North Americans to have a greater dependency on 18th century Universal Truths than there is among Western Europeans (And for obvious reasons). We are a cynical, pragmatic lot over here. That is not a value judgement (it may not even be a valid judgement - or judgment). That could mean that when we start talking about the Voice, we are not using the same script.

So, let's agree that there is a Voice to some extent or other. But just because it is true, does that mean it is worth listening to? I can point to some very truthful individuals in that sense. They also happen to be complete tossers that I am not inclined to listen to.

Which leaves us with a slight problem. How do we get to the nitty gritty that is Andrew Arnold? And How do we know when we've found it?

But more to the point - is it worth looking for?

Andy A

First matter of business--Angela resist being sassy to that lameo boss. I say that because that is what he wants, more excuses to harrass and control. Not to say you should smile and make nice-nice--just don't stoop. This from an expert at working for dysfunctional people.

Now, for a 180-degree turn, something about Andrew's post--and the notion of "variety of voice"--has me squirming. And so I blog. Here's my perspective on Andrew's notion that "stories are told within contexts, with a certain voice, all with a particular audience in mind." Who's voice? Andrew poses this question, wondering if "human voice" isn't too generic.

In part--yes, I think you're right, and I have to admit, I for one hadn't been giving much thought to the notion of variety of voice. But I think that's because I'm already a resident expert on variety of voice. Every day that is what I do. Although some call it "spin," it's essentially doning a specific persona and communicating thusly. Tone, tennor, light or heavy, polite or common---these impressions form what I produce in the name of client deliverables.

The voice I'm more interested in--I guess it's because I tell yarns all day in other people's voices--is GENUINE voice. AKA the voice we each have, deep in our gut, that if we strip away everything else, still resonates.

This is the voice that speaks when you are defending what you love. When you are threatened. When you love. When you feel pain. In other words, voice of passion.

Genuine voice is what businesses think they can do without. But it no longer matters what business thinks. The Net is powering genuine voice--embracing genuine voice as it repels contrived voice. The net is a home for genuine voice, specifically because (in my humble opinion), the net removes the control factor (and fear, which follows closely) associated with genuine voices, which often express uncomfortable (for business) thoughts and ideas.

You are right though--the cultural context of voice can't be overlooked. Still, when you get to the nitty gritty, you too, Andrew Arnold, have genuine voice, deep in your gut, and it's not polite, and it's not contrived. Consider the energy behind that voice, and it's source. Picture yourself defending your family, being jilted at the alter, watching your child come into the world. At that moment, all propriety and social mores ripped away, genuine voice--your voice--resonates. That is when the world will hear you. That is what's worth listening to.

I dont have time to write a lengthy entry...I have to be to work ON TIME. HEY...do you think it would be "over zealous" (his words, at my suggestion) that I voicemail my boss when I get to work and again when I leave for lunch and then again on my return and of course again when I leave? Is this being a snippy bitch or is this prevention from the wagging tounges of clock watchers? THere is something inheriently sick about this entire situation.

Do I fight with fire? If they only thing they have to undermine me with is my tardiness....and his heinie-ness, trusting the words of those who are so incompetent the only method of attack is this base-level bullshit..what the hell...it couldnt hurt, right?

However, does it lower me to thier standards...nah...this is want HE wants...total control.

Meanwhile...our heroine is brushing up her resume and sending out feeelers...hehehehee....
ANGELA

I should write a book...using Jeneane's title: "How to control a control freak"

Ah, but Denver are you orthodixically unorthodox or unorthodixically unorthodox? (There are too many doxies in that last sentence - and the advertising/marketing profession generally.)

Stories are told within contexts, with a certain voice, all with a particular audience in mind. Human voice is all very well and good, but whose voice is a good question to bring up. It is easy to be unorthodox in a relatively unorthodox situation (such as ad agencies, internet start-ups etc), but try it in a merchant bank at your peril.

Not everyone wants to be addressed in an "over familiar" manner. Because I'm English, this question is normally met with jeers of derision of being a "tight-arsed Englishman". But I still think its relevant. There has been too little discussion of variety in voice.

Voice only becomes voice when it is contextually relevant and speaks to the person, rather than at them. Other than that it is wank.

Although I love the spider story, and I have no idea how my sister became so wise (and remains so), I told it for a reason.

Imagine: If no-one did any marketing, would we stop buying Soap? Shampoo? Petrol? Shoes? Light Bulbs? Chips n Dips?

If there were no advertising, would we never have learned about Winning With Worst Practices? (Amazon Sales Rank 2,491. I note that ClueTrain is at 44,035. I have no idea what that means.)

OK, Chris readily admits that advertising is in some sense half the reason he inveigled us into subscribing to RageBoy's list in the first place, but that is the point: the other half is that WE get something of value out of it - it ain't just one-way traffic. It's a conversation that we've entered into voluntarily, not a speech, a lecture, a sermon, or a broadcast.

If we pull the legs off the marcomm people where we work, will the organisation go deaf?

Will we, as individuals, stop having conversations with our customers, with their customers, with our colleagues, with our suppliers, and with our friends?

I don't think so. But someone apparently fears that it might be so . . . . . .

(marcomm = marketing/communications)

Back to the permission thing (from somewhere way back in this blog), it is intricately linked to storytelling and voice isn't it? Giving yourself permission to tell stories (out of school), to be seen *and* heard, to break all of the polite niceties that silence us more and more as we "mature." Incoming messages overwhelmingly outnumber outward expression. What does that do to the wiring of our brains I wonder?

Four year olds have no shortage of stories to tell while forty-four year olds go mum.

Not hard to figure out. Control damages voice. sometimes beyond repair.

Control, and its sidekick fear. Fear of reprisal. Fear of being wrong. Fear of rejection. We're bound so tightly by these constraints, its no wonder that our voices are choked to a hoarse whisper.

Getting to Chris' post re: Telegraph Road. I've been looking at it. And thinking and thinking. Then looking some more. Initially, a little scary, huh? Images evoke feelings--rape of voice comes to mind. But lets look at the institutions in the diagram: Art, government, business, education, media, and religion. Which of these give wings to voice? Art, of course, is the absolute platform for voice. But looking deeper, all of these institutions are "places" for voice--it's just that the voices of the sub-culture within these institutions hold the *stories* (ah ha--a theme emerges). Maybe it's that within each of these institutions, there are layers. We have to, perhaps, strip away the layers to get to voices... to stories.

And within those layers, there are the believable, the credible versus bold-face lies, deceit.

I don't know, I've only begun to noodle on his construct. But it looks fascinating to me. And pretty risky, which, I guess, is the point. ;-)

Stories and intuitions give us hope: the most scarce and valuable resource known to man.

If you believed only in the market research and the statistical analysis of, well, of anything really, then you'd soon give up. You'd lose hope.

Statistically the universe is empty, and even apparently solid matter is so much empty space that any actual "real" substance you might perceive is so statistically insignificant as to be meaningless.

Statistically (as measured by their behaviour) most people are effectively morons and all the advances of human civilisation have only lead to more horrific ways of torturing ourselves and our planet.

It is the stories and intuitions that are our lives; the events we perceive, and the insights we receive, that make living worthwhile, not the statistical analysis. Meaning can only be found in people because people are what gives meaning to matter, meaning itself has meaning only in the context of intelligence, emotion, and spirit. Without these things matter is just matter.

When my elder sister was 13 she wrote a story for an English class about some scientists who performed subtle and disturbing experiments with spiders. They finally succeeded in teaching the spiders to respond to basic commands: forwards, backwards, left, right.

Then they successively removed individual legs from the trained spiders, until finally the legless bodies of the spiders were left motionless on the lab bench.

Which experiments proved the theory; that when you remove the legs from a spider it goes deaf.

I'm out of American Spirits; I've been smoking these 'Basic' crap-for-tobacco cigarettes all day, and I'm either coming down with bronchitis or anthrax as a result. I'm just now hacking up a lung. To keep it short, this from Gonzo Marketing:

"...all we have is intuition and stories to try to make sense of the world, to provide some sort of vision of where we're at and where we may be headed. But that's not so bad. As a species, it's all we've ever had."

The beauty of these three sentences is mighty. A story inside a story, first. And then, beyond even the content, writers, the cadence, cadence, cadence.

Now, someone tell me a story... and good night. (hack, cough, het-hem... send drugs).

Good quote.

I frankly don't think that timid orthodoxy has much to do with professionalism per se, rather that professionalism simply accentuates the perceived risks of non-northodoxy for those timid souls that rely on the madness of crowds for their personal security. Any such person, when faced with even higher risks for much the same or less rewards, will naturally tend to increase their orthodoxy at the expense of any unorthodox impulses they may occasionally suffer.

Why corporate bodies further compound this madness may be similarly linked to the "nice, safe, bank job" image that they like to project.

A part of doing so will surely be the hiring and promotion of people of like mind.

It is one of capitalisms enduring paradoxes that the entrepreneur (i.e. the acquirer of capital) must be a risk-taker, to some degree a bucker of the trend, yet as soon as a capitalist becomes an investor then safety becomes pre-eminent in their thinking. As my hero Bill Bonner likes to say, "they stop worrying about the return ON their investment and start worrying about the return OF their investment."

But the paradox may only be apparent. When they entrust their money to someone else, the capitalist could be justified in thinking that no-one will treat it with the same respect they would, since they were the ones who had to risk the perils of unorthodoxy to secure it in the first place, and it is these very people to whom they are entrusting it that they necessarily fought viciously against to do so.

So maybe there is wisdom in concluding that taking the safe, well-trodden path is about as far as you'd want to trust the MBA'd, Armani'd, and latte'd crowd. What you might call their comparative advantage.

So you stack boards of directors with old people you trust, not young people you think might have some "good fucking ideas".
Many studies of fund managers have shown that they habitually leave funds with people they know, almost irrespective of the actual returns, but certainly even as other investments do markedly better.

There is vastly more going on in todays corporation than the corporation cares to think about, let alone admit. A certain orthodoxy, not to say an agreeable disposition and a flexible morality, will find favour more surely than insight, vigour, raw talent, and passion.

Have we not all seen it again, and again, and yet more, again?

...

And again?

...

This is probably why the vast majority of companies do OK in good times and suffer in bad times; there is little evidence that most companies are in possession of any unique qualities that might enable them to go against the flow.

Sorry, there is vast evidence of such possession - there is little to be found of any will to put it to good use.

This will (or lack thereof) is not necessarily related to incompetence, (althouogh it doesn't rule it out) but rather to a lack of MASTERY in the specific field in which the professional is employed. For marketers then, it is no surprise that the bulk of the profession are impossible to engage in normal, substantive, human conversation. This being precisely what, in our opinion, the profession needs, but exactly what they have been trained, trained, trained, and rewarded (i.e conditioned) NOT to do.

In my own field, at which I am (if I may be so bold) damnably good, I am seldom content to be other than unorthodox. Nay, I have a well earned reputation for maverick notions and impolitic speeches, radical mayhem launched against the staid and unimaginative mass of time-servers and free-loaders.

But speaking of tides, and how we may fare in them, Shakespeare (another of my heroes) put it thusly:

"Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Brutus, from Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3

He did it better.

Which is maybe why I am not a poet.

Or maybe I'm just too timid to be an unorthodox poet . . . . .

We're slowing down. Maybe we're refueling, re-engaging. Or maybe we're just tired. At any rate, I'm starting a new feature, which may last who knows how long, called the Gonzo Marketing quote of the day, or every couple days or so depending, and so here's today's:

In marketing, just as in government, professionalism tends to hew unimaginatively to its own timid orthodoxy. It does not provide leadership, enthusiasm or the kind of impassioned personal engagement that has come to be called gonzo. In stark contrast, business professionalism tends to be arid and passionless, narrowly focused, self-involved. However, this doesn't mean that everyone in business fits this damning characterization. Far from it. In my own experience, there are many more lively intellects at work in the workplace than the misbegotten 'corporate communications' coming out of those places would lead one to believe. There's often more going on in today's corporation than today's corporation would care to admit. New life is growing between the cracks in the corporate edifice, and it's spreading like a weed.

What's the frequency, Kenneth? Discuss.... or not. -j.

As a mother of 5 myself, jenEAne, YES I get it....and I want it...BAD. My boss however is so ignorant he still thinks of instant messaging as a sort of PERSONAL PHONE CALL. HELP...and write the article...even woman with a cat at home can relate...I think?
angela

Denver, I'm so glad you're among us... What a treat. Yeh, my name has its spelling challenges. Blame my sister. She was 9 when I was born, and my parents had the creative idea of letting her spell my name. Pre-phonetics, she used one of the many spelling rules she lived by--or at least got through Catholic school observing--"The first vowel talks and the second vowel walks." Thus: JenEAne. Hey, every family has its issues.

Here's a question I don't know why I'm asking a bunch of guys, but here goes. I've been thinking lately of what the Internet means to me as a mother... especially in that it is merging work and home in ways no one ever anticipated... In an article I'm working on for a women's pub, I consider this:

"While it's not for everyone, teleworking offers women a way to merge work with home, and home with work, in an interesting--and often bizarre--way. With the advent of the Internet, physical distance and asphalt highways no longer separate work life and home life. Instead, within the networked landscape of the Internet, individuals, businesses, and customers are seamlessly connected. Technologies like Instant Messaging--which allows my clients to pop up urgent questions, and the occasional good joke, on my screen in real-time--erase distance. Here is there, and there is here, all at once. For many, this infringement of corporate life into the home is unsettling. To my family, and to me, it has been a blessing.

In a daily hyperlinked state of being, I jump between reading "I Spy," writing articles on e-business hubs, playing with our new "Bob the Builder" walkie-talkies, browsing the latest marketing theories on the Web, and teaching my daughter her numbers and letters. (She's quite a typist to boot!) It's clearly not the life of choice for everyone--but it can be especially appealing to new moms as they weave their way through the challenges and options motherhood sets at their doorstep."

So here's the question: Will other chicks get this? Will anyone care? And, do you guys know of any research on this Net-powered work/life convergence? In my mind these days, I don't really "work" anywhere. I see myself as a little node on this vast network--I'm not "at home" or "at work." I am just "on." I have a voice, therefore I am. Of course, I do my job and the paycheck comes. But more and more, that work-for-pay agreement has become just one of many outputs of my new hyperlinked existence.

And, if I am at the tip of a trend, I think it is a trend that will power the Gonzo model. Look at what's happened since I read the book and embraced its philosophies. You used to search up "jeneane sessum" on google and get one pathetic search result--my "unsubscribe" from the Acid Jazz list. Is that any kind of legacy to leave your kid? You know: "Jeez, she was a really hard worker, and she made lots of business people famous, but what did she ever DO...?" So, since Gonzo, I search my funky ole self up on google, and guess what--I've bumped onto a second page of search results. I'm "becoming" someone--a bonafide online voice. ... It's going to be this way. Especially as "terrorist" warnings urge us to go ahead live our lives, but expect that we may be obliterated on our way to work. I don't know. I'm outta here. Blog on, dear friends.

Andy; Not so much the death but rebirth, I think. As I say, to consider that traditional marketing is actually a synonym for conversation is sub-optimal at best. In that sense marketing is already dead.

lifeless. sterile, barren, brain-dead, the lights are off, nobody is home, and the dog's run away

I think the point that Chris makes is that we now have the means, the motive, and the opportunity to engage in actual conversations with real people. That's enough for a conviction in 28 states.

This may be the death of many marketERS - who just don't wake up before the 16 tonne weight falls on them - but it could be the rebirth of MarketING

Something that offers useful insight into not just the readily measurable statistics on the current state of the market of interest, but enables you to inform yourself about what your potential customers are thinking, what they want, what they're getting from your competitors and substitutes, why they value it, what's missing from it, what they hate about it, etc, etc,

by actually talking and listening with them directly



Jeneane: Has anyone ever told you your name just doesn't roll off the keyboard? Took me 3 goes to get it right.

"Getting it Right" is important. I'm into my empathy and compassion phase for the week now, so I'm wondering what it's like to have your phd in general psych, your MBA from Harvard, and your 16 years worth of ad agency whoring (sorry, career excellence), and be told by some gonzo nobody who posts to a website in Uzbekistan that you and your whole industry are just completely fucked up beyond repair.

Not even good enough for landfill.

Give toxic waste a bad name.

Might be faintly amusing to the more bohemian types, and let's face it, marketing is nothing if not bohemian.

I liked your gonzo mirror, but I most appreciated the examples you gave of clients that actually liked the output from your gonzo marketing think.

I like to think that given ONLY the theoretical concepts that we're talking about they'd probably shudder with horror and politely ask you to leave - but! - faced with the reality of superior output, they just might let you hang around to make a difference, and might even spark up some interest in how you came to produce such material.

When you get ready to buck the system then you'd better be right. A few of my managers over the years have been persuaded that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission, but the unspoken message was always clear: "Only when you're right!"

I've had loooooong experience with having to wait for time to prove me right during my working life, so I know what that's like. Like playing a round of golf, you have to endure great eons of disappointment and frustration to achieve that one shining glorious moment of complete beauty as the ball sails straight up the middle of the fairway, bounces once at the edge of the green and drops into the hole.

Much like sex, I suppose . . . . . . . .

Lighten up, yeahhh! Great fucking ideas, ideas about being fucking great, ideas that are fucking great, ideas about great fucking, whatever.

"not congruent to creative thinking" - nice phrase Jeneane. You know that the internet exists because the Department of Defence recognised that their centralised command and control heirarchy was their greatest weakness?

Talk about a totally unexpected and wholly unintended but very revealing piece of self awareness!!

Don't worry about it jen, the marketing industry usually follows the military by about two millennia. That's why they had amazon women with enormous breasts selling empire building to Roman legionaires while the admeisters have just got around to using them to sell cars to bohemians like me.

Don't get too depressed, your time will come.



Chris: Rock on, Tommy. Mark Knopfler could beat his guitar over my head and I wouldn't complain.

. . . much

Love Over Gold

Oh yeah... and I meant to stick this here too. It's sorta kinda maybe the plan for the next book. I guess I been listening to a lot of Dire Straits lately. Telegraph Road seemed to fit the ideas in a fairly uncanny way. And then there's that guitar...

Skateaway

I guess I should at least say hello, as Jeneane seems to be convinced by my silence that I've contracted anthrax. Well, no. But I hear the Kirkus review of Gonzo that just came out was almost that bad. Ah shit. What're ya gonna do?

What I'm doing at the moment is listening to Dire Straits' old album, Making Movies, which I bought specifically for the tune Skateaway. And to hear Knopfler play just about anything. Man.

...the music make her wanna be the story
and the story was whatever was the song what it was
rollergirl don't worry...

Speaking of voice, Marketplace Morning Edition responded to my prodding by putting mine online. Look for the October 25, 2001 RealAudio clip: Tess Vigeland Interviews Chris Locke About SPAM. So that's what I sound like. Tess is great to work with. I wish they'd air us just rapping before and after the actual taping. I turned on the radio this morning driving home, and there she is doing the news. I got back to the terminal and there was email from her about our segment for next week. Very strange.

Had lunch with this guy from the University of Denver B-school who has invited me to give a talk in Vail in early December. Two days in the lap of luxury -- and room service too! Winning through worst practices. You know.

Hey, I got nothin here tonight. Like I said, just sayin hello. Blog on...

How did we get so uptight?

I'm so glad you guys have joined this little gathering. I'm really enjoying being a blogeur, but thought I should pipe up so you'd know I was still alive.

I was lounging around google tonight, looking for an intellectual high. I found something Chris (yes, it's the third-person for you, now) wrote in Jan of 1996, or in Net-years, the bronze age. It cast a fascinating light--at least for me--on what has happened within the communications business over the last half-decade. Here's what I read in Chris's inaugural editorial for the Net Editors section of internetMCI.

"Interestingly, one sector of the economy most attuned to this change is the advertising industry itself. Last summer I visited the offices of Chiat Day, one of the major ad agencies in New York. The first thing I encountered there was a mural painted across the reception lobby wall that read, in foot-high letters: Advertising is Dead. At the same time, Ogilvy & Mather was publishing -- directly on the World Wide Web -- its six principles of advertising on the net:

1) Intrusive e-mail not welcome.
2) Internet consumer data not for resale without the express permission of the user.
3) Advertising allowed only in designated newsgroups and list servers.
4) Promotions and direct selling are allowed, but only under full disclosure.
5) Consumer research is allowed with the consumer's full consent.
6) Internet communications software must never hide concealed functions.

And of course Messner Vettere was hard at work for its client, MCI, on creating a web version of Grammercy Press, a virtual world illustrating the changes business organizations are likely to experience as they come fully online.

Another stereotype bites the dust. Somehow, these are not the same agencies that brought us the endless news of washday miracles and drop-dead models lounging across the hoods of Detroit's latest. What exactly is going on here?"

I don't know about you guys, but I found this r-e-a-l-l-y depressing. The reason? We've been backsliding for five years. In the early days of Net acceptance but before nirvana, we were obviously onto something. We understood this was all an amazing new experiment--we didn't pretend to have all the answers, have the Internet "solved."

Look how much more real we we were... Check out the voice used by the agencies Chris mentions above. They were "onto" something, without being into themselves. They were energized by possibilities, not exhausted by reality.

In 2001 we are officially afraid to be wrong. To admit we don't know. To accept that the Net is not ours to own, capture, and grab the mindshare thereof.

So instead, too many of us spew spin like a bad carnival ride, hiding from the truth rather than having the boldness to say to customers, "We don't have all the answers. But let's get to know each other and we can come up with some great fucking ideas."

Today is the day of positioning. Plugging square pegs in round holes until they fit--or else! We have become consumed with the need to "define," "own," and "solve."

This trend is not congruent with creative thinking. In fact, it kills creative thinking.

Can you see a top ad or PR agency today stating that advertising is dead--or more timely, brand marketing? No. We pretend that we've got it together, like a bunch of money addicts that need a good 12-step Greed Anonymous program. Is it panic? Terror? Resession-denial? Paranoia over the maturation of the Internet and business's inability to categorize and segment it? (Message from management: If they're paying us all this money, we'd better know about this Net thing by now!)

I guess it's all these things. But tonight I have a new mantra: "Lighten up." No more killing innovation by looking so desparately for answers. It may do us all well to go back and look at the stuff we were doing before what are now the good old days. Maybe we can unearth some worst practices and toss a little risk into the equation... and some reward too. Gonzo style.

Rock on Denver.

Very soon I hope to be reading a book called "The death of market research" Any offers?

Most market research is designed to avoid the human voice - slice up the experience and put it into boxes to dole out to nervous executives who don't really understand what is going on.

They take the information and feed it into the Sausage Machine and lo and behold! Out pops a new marketing campaign.

It is not that the idea behind market research in itself is bad. Of course, we all want to know what motivates people. It is just that most of it seems to measure responses and sidestep the nasty fact that it is PERSON that is giving the responses.

Of course as a member of the medja I don't have to deal with these canvassers so often:

"Would you like to answer a few questions on Lim-O glue, sir?"

"Sorry, I am a Journalist, you're not allowed to speak to me."

It's true. I am on the list of 'not applicables'. What is all that about? "Please don't speak to someone who might disturb the normal distribution curve?"

It isn't because I'm gifted. The same goes for all marketing/communications people. Can't give an opinion.

Andy A

Hi team, me again.

Just testing the new blogBuddy and looking at my post. Funny how you start out to say something reasoned and measured, strong yet subtle, and end up with a crazed rant like that.

It occurs to me that listening is not the same as market research, and that speaking to someone, conversationally, is not the same as advertising. An obvious but necessary truth.

Surprise, I hear you mutter, the dimwit gets it. But this is really the crux of the matter, isn't it? Doesn't classical marketing actually consider market research to be a synonym for listening and advertising to be a synonym for speaking? Rather than as inadequate substitutes for these essential elements of human interaction?

Doesn't this major league misconception explain the massive disconnect between marketers and their markets that Chris is on about? Isn't this the source of the cognitive dissonance that arises when one observes marketers trying so hard to be nice, but just absolutely pissing you off?

Have you ever sat in an executive meeting and heard "Where's the market research?" and wondered to yourself if anyone, ever, just did something because it made sense? Just because they'd listened, cogitated, questioned, listened and cogitated some more, and then just did what came naturally from that?

Aren't the people (and companies) that do this the ones that stand out? Like Apple in their early days, or with their blueberry notebooks, or like the people that make and sell Viagra. Hey - they KNOW what we want! Because they're horny PEOPLE, too.

Like GonzoMan, the new species in interactive marketing: he says what he means, he means what he says, he tells it like it is, and he puts his own money where his mouth is. He speaks to you like a human being, treats you like an autonomous intelligent individual, like you have something to say worth listening to, and you have something listening that is worth speaking to.

Aaaah, the novelty value alone is priceless.

P.S. Chris, I bought your feckin book today from Amazon, I hope it's as good as I say it is . . . . . .

Hi Jeneane, thanks for the re-invite, sorry for the long pause. Hi, team.

Having just read through most of the thread to this point, I've been struck by the Kotler ideas about consciousness levels. Although I have some reservations about the idea of "levels" as he uses them, I can only agree that some people do it better than others (no matter what "it" we're talking about).

I often work with telecommunications operators, who are somewhat (in)famous for saying things like, "well, we invested in 3 million lines worth of broadband internet access for residential customers but so far we've only got 37,000 lines." They often have a complaint attached to these statements about the incompetence of their marketing people. I don't work in marketing officially, but I've successfully marketed myself for 20 years now.

This sort of thing bothers me, and I think is relevant here, because it seems to me to be a huge marketing failure.

Firstly, it is a failure to LISTEN. If there aren't 3 million people out there waiting to snap up your product, at your price, with the characteristics that make it uniquely yours, then you haven't been listening!

You've probably been listening to analysts, pundits, commentators, and experts, but you haven't heard your (potential) customers. If you had, you'd have offered them something you already knew they wanted badly enough to pay you for it, wouldn't you?

Secondly, it is a failure to LISTEN. Hang on, I said that already, didn't I? Seemed worth repeating. Are you listening?

Thirdly, it must surely be a failure to understand. In spite of institutional deafness, there are people out there screaming for service, begging to be allowed to hand over their hard-earned in return for what you have. Not only are you not listening, but when the noise finally intrudes to the point where it cannot be ignored, you don't understand what is being said. As an example, when I use my broadband internet connection at home I am not buying SPEED, that is just what is required to give me what I really want, which is my TIME. What I am purchasing is my time.

If you don't understand WHAT your customers value and WHY, then you have two huge problems. Finding out the WHAT may help you temporarily, but unless you know WHY you will always be vulnerable to substitution, never understanding why your customers are leaving you for someone else. You will never be able to anticipate.

Fourthly, even assuming you may have actually listened a little and understood a bit, if you're still struggling in the market then your market probably hasn't heard from you the things that would tell us that you have listened, that you have learnt, and that as a result, you've concocted something that we actually want.

It is at this point that the concept of a VOICE becomes interesting. Many potential customers would have read the complaint, which in itself implied that it is the customers who are too stupid to realise what great guys you all are. What else would they have made of it? What else did they hear in your voice? You don't know, do you? You have no idea. Not only that, but it hasn't even occurred to you to wonder, has it? Let alone ask . . . . .

Here's a clue: When you talk about your business in terms of "lines" - then you've missed the boat. It isn't the lines that pay you, it isn't the lines that want ADSL, it isn't the lines that generate traffic, it isn't the lines that have these sorts of conversations - conversations that you might learn something from if you took the time to listen.

You have 37,000 customers - that's 37,000 PEOPLE - who somehow or other managed to fight their way through all the obstacles you put in their path to become your paying customers. You can have them be your unpaid (indeed, they pay you) but most valuable and highly productive marketing weapon, or you can piss them off.

Which one seems more likely?

Finally, it astounds me that an apparently educated and experienced business person would talk about take-up of a service without even mentioning the price and considering what the elasticity of demand might be. In isolation from these considerations, the current take-up is meaningless. Discussing it in such simplistic terms only implies that you're a simpleton.

On a bit of a tangent, I've often heard the pundits talk about how profitable or otherwise web-sites are. Anyone here ever had a website pay them money? Ever had a website buy anything from you? You get the point, I'm sure. Preaching to the converted, no doubt.

Brings me back to the air travel saga. I wonder what goes through the mind of someone who organises a marketing campaign like that, spending all the money that that implies, and then resources the mechanism for actually realising income from it, on the implicit assumption that the campaign will fail to generate any significant traffic!

It makes me think that Frank Zappa had the right of it, when he said, "People, we is not wrapped tight!"

Kotler might call it "consciousness level zero".

At what price risk?

I've been none too keen about getting on a plane lately. Then tonight came--the amazing one-day fleamarket on airfares. $31 one way to all of your favorite east coast and mid-west destinations out of Atlanta--from Toledo to Fort Myers.

I'm reading this thinking, Hey, for that price I'll fly. Okay? I can do it. Go home to Rochester, through Buffalo of course, and see the family and friends. For less than $70 roundtrip, I'll get on a plane. Yah, I need to see my Aunt. And my brother. Let's do it...

And then I see it. A dream vacation at a fan-fucking-tastic deal. "Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas." I'm saying, HUH? $62 round trip to the Bahamas? Terrorism be damned--toss me in a window seat and give me a stiff one. Sunshine here I come. Buffalo? Who said Buffalo? Family? What family?

Off I go to airtran.com to book my vacation deal of a lifetime. Hmmm What do you know. First few attempts are bringing all the fares up at their normal $700-ish and climbing prices. What's up with this? That's no good. I click the sale link again, get to the reservation link--was careful not to book on those dreaded fridays and sundays when the fare didn't apply--and still, the same high fares.

I'm Stumped. Well, let me go back to the homepage and try that again. Huh? Ught oh. Things are getting worse. The server's down. Or not responding. Odd messages come up - Sorry, our server is not responding. If you'd like to make a reservation, click "here". Okay. I'll click "here". ERROR.

Well, heck, no wonder--at that rate, everyone in Atlanta is online booking their flight to Toledo. Surely, though, no one spotted that Grand Bahama's deal. I'm just going to have to call them. I'll pay the $36 one way and do it over the phone. Throw caution to the wind.

So, for the next two hours, I press redial after redial after redial. Busy. No-go. Argh. I'll just keep trying.

With portable phone in one hand and DSL-powered laptop in the other, I look up the resort where we will stay... maybe forever. The only all inclusive resort on the Island--Club Viva Fortuna. What a hot name--I am SO packed. Even has a kid's club. Look at that fucking BEACH!

I try with no luck to find out through the site what it costs to stay at my paradise, but can't, and having no idea what resorts on the Grand Bahama Island cost, I call my new Bahamian friends at Club Viva Fortuna. They sound so happy there. I can see Vivienda's face now. She tells me there's lots of availability in December. Call back in the morning for reservations. How much? I was afraid to ask. $75 per adult per night. All inclusive. Drinks round the clock. Beach galore. Eat, drink, forget about "The Evil Ones." All for $150 a night. Kids stay free. I had found my paradise! Nothing standing between me and Vivienda but a bottle of sunscreen and airtran.com.

Just to be sure I'm spending my $75/night wisely, I sneek over to google and search up some reviews on the place. Aside from the occasional ants in the room and geckos in the closets--which upset a few of the guests--it sounds like heaven. Everyone said their children had a blast. The occasional "rude waitstaff," sure. Isn't there always? I'm not swayed from my new favorite vacation spot.

In fact, I'm more determined than ever. This is IT. Get back on the phone to airtran and do my redial dance. For another hour. Damn! What is UP!? Play with the home page. Trying to get in on a gimme. Nothing.

Meantime, my brother in law calls. Yeh, man--you can get from Boston to the ATL for $74 round trip--come on down! We jump over to delta.com (running the same special under a different marketing promo cover and WITHOUT my favorite Club Viva Fortuna destination) and click-click through all the steps, no time flat, we even get to pick his seat online. Bada-boom - James, we'll see you in January. Thank you for choosing delta.com. A thing of beauty. Why don't they fly to my Club Viva Fortuna? Why? What do they have against Grand Bahama?

Now I'm back over to airtran.com, trying to click my way in the back door, through some secret someplace no one else knows about. Come on baby.... contact us... no... help... no... back round the front door again and into the 36-city special..... and..... error.

If you have a lousy sale, shouldn't you be ready for people to TAKE YOU UP ON IT???

Then a lightbulb goes off. No. you don't think. no. couldn't be....

A few bucks more, but yes. Travelocity.com was working just fine. No errors. Same price plus a couple of bucks more because they have a web site that works. Take me through the process, Kenneth. So we set out. When do you want to depart - heck, any day--let's say November 13.

Sorry, no availability for that date. (then why was it BLUE when I went to book it? Blue is good. Grey is bad). Oh well, at least they have plenty of other dates. You can travel between now and February 13th. Something must be left.

But as I click my way through every week from November to February, one by one, availability magically disappears, blue turns to grey, and Club Viva Fortuna is again but a dream away.

Vivenda!! Why?!?!

I try to call airtran a few last times, just so I can hear a stupid call center shmuck tell me the terrible truth. That I am never going to get to Club Viva Fortuna. But the line's still busy. You tell me those phones aren't sitting on the desks while the whole lousy bunch of them tip-tap their fingers on their special keyboards, sneaking in that secret airtran.com backdoor and booking their own trips to Club Viva Fortuna.

Conspiracy.

Bastards.

So I'm back over to delta.com. Where it all began. And with the same flawless navigation, I click my way through to the $74 round trip vacation (including taxes and all those other crappy fees) that looked so good before I ever learned about Club Viva Fortuna. And the ants. And the geckos.

Flying into Buffalo in February... what could go wrong?

-----

So I need to read the book. okay.

Personally, I am a firm believer in leaving the poor employees alone, but beating the management with a big stick - regularly and hard.

The basic point is that most executives aren't capable of writing a shopping list, let alone anything else. This is not to be nasty to them - I have a grave difficulty with Excel spreadsheets and calculators, but I leave all that to them. Would that they could do the same with communications.

My best practice so far has been to stick to them like a nasty smell and nag them endlessly, while at the same time intercepting any dubious messages and helpfully rewriting them before they miss their targets. All done with a smile on my face and a red pen gripped tightly in my fist. or should that be with a red face and a smile gripped tightly in my fist...

But to get back on track, I haven't read the book, only the first two free chapters. I am going to be working from home for the next three months so I am ordering - honest Chris.

But aside from this bright spot, you are right in that key messaging documents are generally nasty beasts devoid of voice and any other redeaming qualities. I think they can be an important weapon in our arsenel of change though. You see, it's almost like the game where you whisper a phrase into someone's ear, and then they whisper into the next one, and by the time it gets to the last person it's a whole different phrase? Well, if everyone working on this type of stuff starts doing it gonzo style, weaving in the koolaid where we can, I think we can fix it, Bob.

From cluetrain: "The good news is that almost all of us already know how to talk like real people. It’s just a matter of pulling that fat axe from our skulls."

Mine's almost out. And that has to ripple out to the businesses I think for, write for... doesn't it?

Oooooh. This is going to be fun! First, Angela hello! You can order a copy of this wonderful book by clicking on the book title, up there, to your left, top of screen. You should read Gonzo--it is an amazing business book. Have you read Cluetrain? Go to www.rageboy.com and read the stuff that has us all gabbing.

Andrew--hello to you too. I know. I know. Really. Maybe I'm just telling myself that it is helping because I have to write these petty little client deliverables to get a paycheck. But I don't think so. Last week I had to edit some articles from a, shall we say, important blue-chip client---maybe the bluest chip of them all if you get my drift. I didn't just correct the stupid stuff. I could have done that, billed a couple hours, and sent it back.

Instead I took what is in my business kind of a risk (hey, it's a boring life, but it's mine.) I tore them apart and gave them a whole new voice--post-gonzo-reading is different than what I would have sent them back before. I did more than make them make sense. I took out the corporate speak. I took out about 20 references to the client and turned these things around into something that would at least talk to customers at their level. They weren't pedantic corporate hoopla anymore. That's what I meant about the Gonzo mirror.

I'm not pretending this will change the world, but you know what, both of the client contacts emailed me back--they loved what I did. Sometimes it's not that companies don't want to get rid of the bullshit, it's that they've been standing in it so long they don't know there's fresh grass right next to them.

Bob the Builder - yes he can!

Gonzo-Thang..WHAT?

Thank you kindly for the invitation to write amongst your blogginess...Do tell Gentle reader, shall I obtain a copy of "Gonzo...." ? Do I need to be an informed participant or will my random rants, raves and observations suffice? As a matter of fact, I am interested in the GONZO marketing strategy. WHERE? huh? I mean, is it a Barnes and Noble thing? Please remember I am stuck out here in the Swamps of Joisey.

And what about Dick Cheney warning us to becareful (I like the word compounded...BECAREFUL should be a word...I'll write the decendents of Daniel Webster. Did you know they live in Monclair NJ.?) What up with that? Okay gasoline prices have dropped, so you know they did something..and now something is gonna happen.

Has anyone actually laid eyes on Dick Cheney? He remindes me of the wizard in the wizard of Oz...behind the curtain telling the scare crow, the cowardly lion and the tin man what to do....if it wasnt 5 am I might even make analogies...alas...I need java for that activity.

ciao for now...Angela

Jeneane,

Thanks for the invite. Right, let's get into it...

You mentioned how you have been using gonzo-like influences as a mirror to hold up against key messages. To my mind key messages are the worst offenders against human voices. I despair of the tripe written by 26-year-old McKinsey consultants who are trying to force-feed their messages into unwilling workers, stakeholders... whatever.

It is a generally unrecognised fact that people in a change situation (let's face it, that's most of us now) don't want a Why they want a How and When. Concrete facts not corporate bullshit. I dream of the day when corporations talk to their employees like grown ups. Tell them they've been fired because the products aren't selling rather than talk about "prevailing economic conditions".

it is interesting that some companies are trying to get with it by talking to their customers in an adult tone of voice, but don't extend that same respect to their internal audience.

Bob the Builder - can he fix it?

After that last post, I'm officially sick of hearing myself talk.

And so I've opened the blog up to the team of folks who said they wanted to party down with Gonzo way back when I started this thing, during the Clinton administration. Anyway, Invites are out. If you didn't get one, that just means I don't like you. Only kidding. If you want to join in the fun, just telepathically transmit me your wishes, send me a sign, drop me an email, or send me $20. (okay, keep your damned money.) Let's start some conversations, or at least some parallel monologues.

Hope to hear from you...

I don't want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day
I don't want to play
I just want to bang on the drum all day.
-Todd




-jeneane

Farting around in the NOTES chapter, I decided to read the "Ideavirus" article (ala fast company), which you seem none to pleased with, as it falls short of Gonzo in its commercial wrinkle.

With the 'manifesto' references and emphasis on 'conversation,' Godin sounds like someone who's been eating his cluetrain wheaties: "What marketers are now on the lookout for -- and we're all marketers now -- is something that taps into the invisible currents that run between and among consumers. Instead of talking to -- or at -- consumers, we have to help consumers talk to one another."

Forgetting charges of plagerism from the thoughtcontagion.com guy, and all of the subsequent posts about the article on the Fast Company site, and looking at the article on its own merrit, I still think it falls short of being a 'manifesto'. At its crux, the article says this: A good idea can go a long way. Um. Okay. And?

But then I hyperlink my little brain back to Gonzo, where Rageboy, getting kind of worked up, says this: "Are marketers really naive enough to believe that the same brain-numbing key messages their advertising and PR departments have been peddling all along are suddenly going to go viral?"

Ouch. I'm licking my wounds.

Okay, done. No, not the same messages we've been peddling. Those won't do. But isn't it still possible for those of us "in the business" of crafting key messages to make those messages resonate? Isn't it a baby step that we are beginning to create messages with genuine voice? messages that employees can understand, customers can relate to--and even maybe, if we're ever so lucky, want to talk about among themselves? Please tell me it is. Because otherwise I'm not sure what I'm going to be when I grow up.

But as I hyperlink again to Chapter 6 of Cluetrain, this nugget:

"And increasingly, we value only two qualities:
1.The engagement and passion-for-quality of genuine craft.
2.Conversations among recognizably human voices.

More and more, as I wander around inside of Gonzo, EGR, JOHO, TDCRC, Doc Searls' blog, and other places of voice, I go back to my own craft (okay, so they pay me for it), and I'm weaving these ideas into what I do for clients... into the messages I create for them. (And that's a big part of my job.) For me, Gonzo is a mirror I hold up to expose flaws in my work. And I rethink, re-do, re-think, actually talk to people in these companies, look at what customers are saying. And so, these messages are maturing into something more (I hope) than mind-numbing. Can it change the fact that every fricking company wants to be the 'leading, first, only and best' and other meaningless adjectives that no one believes? No. But at the least, I can contain that stuff within the company boilerplate. And if I contain the mind-numbing same-ol-same-ol in the boilerplate, then maybe I keep it from going viral in the most infectious sense of the word.

Key messages are not boilerplates. In messages, we can weave in some feelings, some voice, rather than generic corporate-speak. At least we can do that much. At the least. But it's something. Come on, give me a reson to get up tomorrow. My sweet child (my reason) has me playing with her new Bob the Builder walkie-talkies now--and I'm not thinking clearly. Gotta run. later.

The book has 4 1/2 stars on Amazon now, so we're not crazy. That's good to know. Let me work some more on the NOTES chapter today. That's my goal.

As I set off to find the reference to Philip Kotler's "Marketing Management: The Millenium Edition," I came across another Kotler article, from the 1972 BI (before Internet), that struck a certain fancy in me. The article describes what Kotler describes "Three different levels of consciousness can be distinguished regarding the boundaries of marketing." And it foreshadows where we are today, which is somewhere between consciousness three and the stratosphere.

I'm sure marketing types have already read this Kotler article--and for all I know it could be referenced in Gonzo in one of the notes I didn't initially comprehend. (I think you have to read Gonzo 3 times before you can actually absorb it all).

At any rate, here are the three levels Kotler outlines as he describes them.

At the crux of consciousness level one, is the payment. Transaction is the ultimate goal and reward. Kotler describes consciousness level one this way: "Consciousness one is the conception that marketing is essentially a business subject. It maintains that marketing is concerned with sellers, buyers, and "economic" products and services. ... The core concept defining marketing consciousness one is that of market transactions. A market transaction involves the transfer of ownership or use of an economic good or service from one party to another in return for a payment of some kind."

This level, when Kotler defined it in 1972, was, he determined, the most widely held view in the mind of marketing pratitioners and the public. I would argue that today, with the emergence of emarketplaces and the push of marketing into b-to-b online commerce, many businesses are still in this consciousness level one when it comes to the Internet. They miss the forrest for the trees. They go with gusto after aggregation, adoption, transaction, and lose sight of what might power their business beyond the transaction. Click here, add to your cart. Order? or Continue shopping. As it was in the offline world of 1972, the masses today--according to yours truly--remain lodged in this rather dull and limited consciousness of marketing's promise and worth.

So then, what's consciousness level two about?

Kotler: "Consciousness two marketers do not see payment as a necessary condition to define the domain of marketing phenomena. Marketing analysis and planning are relevant in all organizations producing products and services for an intended consuming group, whether or not payment is required. For example, a price can be charged for museum attendance, safe driving lessons, birth control information, and education. The fact that many of these services are offered 'free' should not detract from their character as products. A product is something that has value to someone. Whether a charge is made for its consumption is an incidental rather than essential feature defining value. In fact, most of these social goods are 'priced,' although often not in the normal fashion. Police services are paid for by taxes, and religious services are paid for by donations."

Okay, so for consciousness level two, I'm in a bit of a quandry. I dig the part about organizations not defining marketing value in terms of payment. Times, techniques, and tactics are way too complex today to pigeon-hole value into terms of payment. To do this--or to even try to track it--puts organizations in the unenviable position of spending more time defining and measuring value than DELIVERING it. So, let's just say the organization does a symbolic internal handshake--"okay marketing, go ahead and get us some payback through some gonzo-type methods... we won't measure your success solely on sales... we'll see what kind of reverberations start to ripple back our way instead." Well, if that's the deal, I'm down with that. Let's go to it.

But, I suspect Kotler--even though he's discussing it 30 years ago, is getting at something different. He further defines it this way: "Marketing consciousness two states that marketing is relevant in all situations where one can identify an organization, a client group, and products broadly defined."

But the skinny is this--you don't want to get stuck in consciousness level two because you have to continue to do boring and time-consuming things that keep you from talking with and getting to know people that may one day be your customers--or have a brother-in-law that may be a customer one day... you know. Kotler says that organizations in level 2 "must study the size and composition of their market and consumer wants, attitudes, and habits. They must design their products to appeal to their target markets. They must develop distribution and communication programs that facilitate "purchase" and satisfaction. They must develop customer feedback systems to ascertain market satisfaction and needs." Well, as for the mainstream way of doing these things--demographics, phsychographics, brand surveys--then yuck.

At any rate, I think number 2 is not for me, free birth control pills or not.

So let's look at Consciousness Level 3:

Read this with your Net lenses on--not your 1972 lenses, and see if we're getting closer to where we need to be: "The emergence of a marketing consciousness three is barely visible. Consciousness three marketers do not see why marketing technology should be confined only to an organization's transactions with its client group. An organization--or more properly its management--may engage in marketing activity not only with its customers but also with all other publics in its environment. A management group has to market to the organization's supporters, suppliers, employees, government the general public, agents, and other key publics. Marketing consciousness three states that marketing applies to an organization's attempts to relate to all of its publics, not just its consuming public. Marketing can be used in multiple institutional contexts to effect transactions with multiple targets."

Okay, so if you get past the transaction (the underlying goal of affecting transactions at every turn), you replace "transact" and "market" with "interact" and "communication/conversation,' it gets a little bit closer to Gonzo, but not quite there. (For reasons I'll discuss next.)

"The emergence of a marketing consciousness three is barely visible. Consciousness three marketers do not see why [communication] should be confined only to an organization's [interactions] with its client group. An organization--or more properly its management--[should talk] not only with its customers but also with all other publics in its environment. A management group has to [communicate] the organization's supporters, suppliers, employees, government the general public, agents, and other key publics. Marketing consciousness three states that [communication] applies to an organization's attempts to relate to all of its publics, not just its consuming public. Marketing can be used in multiple institutional contexts to effect [interactions] with multiple targets."

The primary reason consciousness level 3 falls short of gonzo is this--check out the emphasis on 'management' doing all of the talking. No no no. Shy of the boat here. In the water. Throw a lifeline. Even though level 3 brings in important notions that expand the communications of the business beyond its walls, it still reeks of a top-down (not bottom-up) style. This won't get us anywhere, because Kotler has management doing all the talking to management's "targets."

What is gonzo-like is Kotler's expanded notion of transaction in consciousness level 3. His initial definition, back in one of the earlier consciousnesses was this: "A market transaction involves the transfer of ownership or use of an economic good or service from one party to another in return for a payment of some kind."

Right now on the Net, the most valuable transactions are often anything but financial. A transaction is an exchange--and exchange IS communication, it IS conversation. It's more than the click that buys the book on Amazon--it's the communities and lists that ignite conversations around shared interest. Today, a transaction of ideas, opinions, tips organic gardening, getting rid of fire ants... the like can be just as valuable as that $14.99 click that brings the book to my door.

But Kotler expands this definition of transaction in his discussion of consciousness level 3. There is a ring of gonzo in this expanded definition: "What then is the disciplinary focus of marketing? The core concept of marketing is the transaction. A transaction is the exchange of values between two parties. The things-of-values need not be limited to goods, services, and money; they include other resources such as time, energy, and feelings. Transactions occur not only between buyers and sellers and organizations and clients, but also between any two parties."

Transaction as feelings. THAT I like. Given that we've pushed the envelope way beyond the notion of "two party" communication, still, transactions as feelings made it worth the read.

From here, the article goes into some axioms, typologies and the like. But I prefer to noodle on this idea of transactions as feelings for a while. I'll get to the rest of the article one day. So if someone hasn't already written an article taking us into consciousness level 4, then they need to, because that is some cool territory that needs a flag stuck in it.

later.

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.