Dear Jordon:
I am glad you took advantage of our Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement consulting practice Stage One -- Break Your Company.
We are also happy you chose to apply Derailment service from Clutrain Division at no charge to you.
We look forward to being your vendor of choice for years to come.

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Chief Derailment Manager of the Rulebreaker Division of TDCRC

Thanks for the plug, Janeane. However, you introduced me to the group by my screen name instead of my real name. I'm Tom Shugart, actually, and Janeane has been too nice to me for me to get mad at her.
Looking forward to getting going in blogging, and to some good reads here--as well as getting further into Gonzo, which I've only skimmed to date. But, clearly I'm intrigued.

When I picked up Cluetrain, I read it in one sitting and started to feel sick. I was (am) in the middle of writing a book and as I was reading it, I realized, Locke is right and I am not. Gonzo only re-inforced that sick feeling. Everything I have ever read on branding and positioning was becoming garbage. The sick feeling grew as I knew that the way I had done my job was based on branding and positioning the organization.

At the same time I couldn't put either book down. I knew they were right and I knew that is why I had been drawn to the web, to participate in discussion and share my voice. great books but they wrecked months of work!

Coop

I've added someone to the team--one Tom Shug--who's relatively new to the notion of blogging and thinking about starting his own. I am cheering him on based on the wonderful stuff he writes in the emails he's sent me, a piece of which follows:

Suddenly, its 1958. I'm sitting in my college pad in the attic of a cheesy rooming house. My on-top-of-everything buddy, Jack, hands me a book of poetry and says, "fasten your seatbelt." It's Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" It's one of those moments you never forget. I'm practically leaping out of my chair. I know, instinctively, that somehow, somewhere, the revolution we didn't know we were hungering for has begun.

It was ten years before the streets spilled over, but, believe me, there were plenty of discussion groups going on in the interim--perhaps not so different from GonzoEngaged--people not wanting to live The Lie any longer--ferment and urgent inquiry simmering beneath the surface of the bullshit gentility of the time.

Uh, yeh, I think Tom's got a future in blogging...

You don't have to be a spammer to be a proponent of demographics-targeting personalization marketing.

Ai - that was my point I think. We may be approaching some sort of violent agreement.

Dilbert asks the key question. This is really the question Clay is asking, but the other way round - how do you know that the ad spend in FMCG or CPG or whatever you call them is actually achieving incremental sales?
What quantification techniques are used, and could one try the same techniques with Gonzo campaigns?

This reminded me of Ruth Shalit's articles in Salon a couple of years ago, such as this one about the superego of the Pillsbury doughboy. Lots more here

One tru b!x: You may be right. (I may be crazy.) But he also shits all over customisation - but only as it is (ab)used by people who think "SPAM=marketing".

Well, he seems to send personalization for a stay with the Tidy Bowl man. I don't know how opposed Locke is to customization in terms of a user making his own little information portal, per se. The argument appears to be that personalization is Just Another Demographic Tool for Command and Control, rather than any honest engagement with online markets. You don't have to be a spammer to be a proponent of demographics-targeting personalization marketing.

Mike Golby: I wasn't questioning Amazons quarterly results, but simply that these mean what they were implied to mean. Reading the article cited, they appear to have well over 2 billion in accumulated losses, with 900 million on hand. To me, this means they are quite some way from being profitable, although they have (for one quarter at least) stopped losing money I think it's still a bit early to be proclaiming Mr Bezos as "right" about anything.

One tru b!x: You may be right. (I may be crazy.) But he also shits all over customisation - but only as it is (ab)used by people who think "SPAM=marketing".

This guy (asscrawler) is a living monument to the notion that reality is an ironic aside.

So this boob is afraid of boobs. Wouldn't you know it? I hear there are some extra burqas lying around in Afghanistan--that might be a cheaper solution to his little problem with the Spirit of Justice.

Anybody else in the middle of reading Bombast right now? I stayed up half the fricking night glued to Chris' brain surgery and other brain altering experiments. I feel strung out just from having read it--can't imagine living it. Although, having lived in Rochester without doing acid, I think I got the raw end of the deal. No matter what you think of GM, or the state of marketing, or whether you're to the left or the right of the cluetrain (or onboard), you have to admit that Locke is an astounding writer and story teller and Internet historian. Anyway, just thought I'd check in because I thought I'd read a few of you who said you were also reading Bombast. Wondering your thoughts so far.

here's to monday (ugh).

Apropos an earlier post questioning Amazon's 4Q profit. Here's another.

How about this for a relevant quote:

"Samlermennesket dukker frem igjen, men nå som informasjonssamler. I denne rollen er det elektroniske menneske en nomade i like høy grad som sine paleolittiske forfedre" (McLuhan citeret i Bakke & Julsrud 1996: 5).

"The hunter gatherer is cropping up again, but now as an information gatherer. In this the role the electronic man is a nomad just as much as his pæleolithic forefathers" Marshall McLuhan.

- Andy A

This is a strawman I think, since that ain't what Mr Locke ever said. Indeed, what he said could perhaps be better paraphrased as "If you want to do mass marketing on the web, you'd better not do it the way you do it on TV or Radio."

He seems to shit on "mass" too much in the book for this to have ever been what he was trying to say.

Tom, AT&T's equity went into a huge bet on circuit switching aginst packet networks. Packet networks are simpler, cheaper and more efficient. They do require more subtle billing, but most telco's don't want to overhaul their billing systems to enable this, as that would involve writing off their exisiting investment. I can dig you out some links if you like.

Clay, you are missing part of the point of Gonzo. A big chunk of time in any business environment is speant in having conversations with people - colleagues, people you are buying or selling to, or just water cooler chats. As originator of the term 'render wander', I appreciate that many jobs often include times when you are waiting on something or someone. Historically this would mean reading the paper, or chatting about last nights game. The net lets you use this downtime to tallk in public, as we are doing here. Enlightened employers encourage this, or at least don't condemn it, as it adds value to the employees insight and hopefully to the companies perception.

I work on QuickTime at Apple as a software engineer. While compiling code, I join in many mailing lists loosely related to video, media and so on. I don't spend all my time selling Apple or QuickTime, but when it is relevant I'll mention them as options. I think this works - someone recently paid me the compliment that if you are looking for information about an aspect of QuickTime, adding "Kevin Marks" to your google query improves your hit quality no end.

I think there's a bit of terminological confusion here.

First of all, you've switched from criticising GM for saying that traditional spammer marketing methods (one way, full noise, low brow, etc) don't work on the net, to now saying that it claims mass marketing of any sort can't work on the web.

This is a strawman I think, since that ain't what Mr Locke ever said. Indeed, what he said could perhaps be better paraphrased as "If you want to do mass marketing on the web, you'd better not do it the way you do it on TV or Radio."

Apropos of which I would note that neither Tescos nor Amazon are nuts enough to spam their actual or potential cutomers with loudly insulting crap.

For example:
Human voices are expensive, and products like bleach don't do well with expensive marketing -- how much more bleach are you going to get someone to buy by engaging micromarkets? and at what cost?

Isn't that what I said?

i.e. True, But Clay still has a point: I don't want to listen to engaging voices discussing bleach any more than I want to be spammed about it across 7 different media.

Not the exact words, but I was agreeing with you on that point. There isn't any milage in changing from a low cost to a high cost method when the low cost one already works. Not for me the customer and not for you the marketer.

Why do you think I started my rant with "Clay, you got your head screwed on straight mate" ?

Did you think I didn't mean it?

I did, sincerely.

I didn't say (or didn't mean to say) that the web is inherently inimical to mass marketing, but it surely hasn't shown any signs of rewarding the traditional broadcast techniques which have been unthinkingly attempted. There's an important difference here I believe.

And, just in passing, I'd note that Amazon is far from making any profit. It *may* survive and indeed prosper - I sure hope so, I buy a lot of stuff off them because I (mostly) like the way they operate - but it is far from certain. IIRC, they are still well over 2 Bills in the hole. Hardly a shining example by any means.

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money - the Shit has hit the Fan
- Warren Zevon

b!x, I think you're coming at what I'm coming at, from a different angle. Gonzo, from my point of view, *isn't* about selling bleach, but most marketing dollars go for products like bleach, or toilet paper, or dishwasher detergent. Where I think Cluetrain is right, and Gonzo is wrong, is in being too literal about the nature of 'markets are conversations.' Human voices are expensive, and products like bleach don't do well with expensive marketing -- how much more bleach are you going to get someone to buy by engaging micromarkets? and at what cost?

Denver's answer is "I don't buy bleach on the net", but that misses the point -- just because he doesn't do something on the net doesn't mean no one does it. To takes Tom's call for examples, take a look at what Teso is doing with online groceries. Two points of note: their current home page features a contest relating to diswasher detergent -- doesn't get much more mass market than that -- and they are the world's biggest online grocery store, and growing like mad -- $450 million in revenues last year, $22M of which was profit.

So Denver's idea that the net is inherently inimical to mass marketing seems to me to be off the mark -- if people are making money doing it, it isn't going away. Tesco is making money doing it, as is Wal-Mart, and Amazon, etc. In this view, Gonzo is an addition to the marketing mix, not a replacement.

Sometimes examples help. This brief one to suggest the nature of changes are taking place due to market forces that include consumer choice, but go beyond it: I used to use AT&T for long distance. The company's "brand" bollocks of reliability, quality and service was good enough for me. As a journalist, I remember about 6 years ago asking an AT&T spokesman if the company had any qualms about voice-over-net technology. None whatsoever, the more the merrier, etc., came the reply, with the assuredness of a Titanic engineer. Cut to today - AT&T stock is shit; it's losing customers to companies like ZoneLD - (not a VON play, just a cheaper way to bill and service accounts). Now when I tell telemarketers for AT&T or Worldcom that I pay 4.5 cents a minute anytime, day or night, with no monthly fee, they melt away. When another AT&T rep explained to me that I am paying $1.50 for the privilege of being presented with AT&T's monthly bill, and that anytime I make a calling card call over their lines from a pay phone, the meter starts at $5, I offered the observation that there was no surer way to guarantee that I and many others would never use their lines, services, hardware or investment opportunities again. There is a trend out there, I think - a growing one - in which old industrial stalwarts like AT&T are adopting the nickle-and-diming-to-death tactics of rural Georgia police departments (no offense, Jeneane), homeless windshield washers, and entirely disreputable appliance service cheeseballs. In fact, that is what it is: the cheeseballification of the industrial elite. The question is, where did that AT&T equity go?

Cafepress is the shiznit. I wonder if they are making money. They've been around for quite awhile now, but I don't know if I've ever seen any ads for them. Could they really have lasted this long purely on word of mouth from all their satisfied store owners like myself?

What about "All your blog are belong to us" ?

Whe who are transforming the fucking world are in the house. I write to Gary Blogstickers Turner and say, Gary, let me know when you have t-shirts and stuff, because I want to wear one to my family reunion, and crap I think it would be cool to walk through the halls at work with my bogsticker mug. We exchange a couple of emails on how to, how it might work, then Gary shoots me this email:

-------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: okay, merchandise now?
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 18:56:48 -0000
From: "Gary Turner"
To: "Jeneane Sessum"

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/store.aspx?storeid=blogstickers

how's that for time to market?

gary

-----------------------------------------------------

I proudly dropped 30 bucks on a mug and shirt. Anticipating bumper stickers and caps. But don't wait, go get your blogwear on!

-jeneane

True, But Clay still has a point: I don't want to listen to engaging voices discussing bleach any more than I want to be spammed about it across 7 different media.

I don't recall gonzo being about this either, but hey maybe RB does some sort of weird 180 in the last 1/3 of the book and I should hush until I'm done.

But somehow I doubt it.

True, But Clay still has a point: I don't want to listen to engaging voices discussing bleach any more than I want to be spammed about it across 7 different media.

What I think Clay is missing is the central differences between the net and the broadcast media:

1. A fundamental difference in the *nature* of the medium (many to many/bidirectional as opposed to unidirectional/one to many)

2. A massive difference in demographics.


The net is not TV (as if that needs stating) so it is not really a source of wonder that insulting TV ads don't particularly work on it.

Does anyone imagine we fervid freakshow fetishists are making a TV program?

What do they imagine? Survivor?

There is no TV analog to Blog. RadioPossibility.com notwithstanding, there is no broadcast radio analog to Blog. The astounding science fiction successes of online news magazines and papers notwithstanding (HA!), there is no print media analog to Blog.

There is no top-down, insult shouting, work or get fired, 2% efficient, elitist bullshit, 127 GigaWatts, analog to Blog.

There is no analog to Blog.

I've already gone this round with Shirky. He doesn't get it. You gotta talk math. There's a duality going on that doesn't lend itself well to equations, multiple math problems going on simultaneously. Too complex for this chick to explain. Anyone?

Now its obvious to me that Gonzo will work well in places where cost is large (e.g. cars, computers), so that there is enough money to pay for real human voices, but I am fairly sure that Gonzo will not work where cost is already small, i.e. high-volume/low-margin commodities -- bleach, beer, flour, rice, on and on, the stuff that accounts for most marketing dollars spent.

Um. Did I miss something? Where was it argued that the point of gonzo is to pay for real human voices as if real human voices aren't already inside companies -- they're just not getting paid for using those voices. None of this has anything to do with having to hire more people. On the company end, it's about getting out of the way of the real human voices that already exist.

No, I got that shit OK Clay.

Just letting you know its mutual.

But I don't buy bog rolls or bleach on the net.

See? You're still assuming that the net = mass market in there somewhere, aren't you?

The phone call thingy? I suspect nobody knows who made it up to impress whom. I'd bet a Democrat invented it myself.

Half the world has yet to make a phone call.

I doubt this statistic. Where does it come from, and more importantly, when? because I think global teledensity is too high for this to be accurate.

-clay

I *will* have your respect and your consideration or there will be NO SALE! Now, you may well conclude that I'm the lone voice of whatever, lunacy or reason, take your pick. But like I say, I'm at least fucked up enough to think I ain't so different from anyone else out there.

No, you're not different from anyone else out there. In fact, you're pretty much the same as everyone else out there. Everybody hates most advertising. No surprises there.

What I don't think you grok is about the companies selling bleach (or beer, or rice, or socks, or...) is that the don't care about you, and in particular, they don't care whether they sell to _you_ or not. They only care that they make _a_ sale, and the miracle of the market is that anybody else's money is as good as yours.

People here are going on as if telling the truth about advertising will cause the whole edifice to crumble, but the people who do it for a living have you beat in the 'understanding what works and what doesn't' department. Direct Marketing has an average response rate of around ~2%, or, put in Gonzo terms, they have a failure rate of 98%. And this is success. If your ad is only ineffective for 49 people out of 50, you're doing good. So they go to work every day knowing that most advertising doesn't work.

And you know what? They make crazy money doing it, because the cost is so low that 2% efficiency makes them like baleen whales. They don't concentrate on the the big hunt, they just swim around in the seas of the mass market, sucking up krill. If you can get enough throughput, 2% efficiency at low cost beats 50% efficiency at high cost.

So your rant, while amusing, is a poor predictor of a change in the way those companies do business. The fact that you demand some sort of "considersation" before you buy a roll of toilet paper just makes you too expensive to service as a customer for a large category of goods.

-clay

Check out RageBoy's little find on the Enron that was. Don't you love that companies have souls and always tell the truth and do such meaningful, caring work? I love that. Then they bail on us completely, shoot some people in the head, and devastate the rest. It's just what I fucking love about business and marketing. The trust. The love. The joy. I'm glad nothing's changing because of this here net. Really. I wouldn't have it any other way.

"it's the journey you take yourself on..."

Clay, you got your head screwed on straight mate.

Did I mention that broadcast advertising (spamming) doesn't work on the web? Yeah, we did that thang, I'm pretty sure.

I have a rampaging doubt that the Internet population can in any way be considered a mass market yet. Say what you like about the intelligence of the average American, - no, no, I won't have them maligned any further - I for one believe that the smartest and most prosperous people on this planet are hooked into the net.

Some of the sanest people are elsewhere, but I digress . . . . .

Half the world has yet to make a phone call. Maybe a third or more of them don't have electricity. I ain't blaming anyone for any of this; just trying to put things in perspective, see? Even in the US of A, where more millions of households own more TV's than any dumbfuck Kiwi can possibly imagine while standing in the dole queue (where you can have some pretty amazing epiphanies, let me tell you!) - well, even there, how many of those households are on the net?

The nature of the net marketplace *is* different. You better fuckin believe it, shitkickers. The spirit of monkey was - irrepressible. Just thought I'd throw that in there to screw this thing all to hell before I accidentally come to some meaningful point.

Oh yeah: I don't buy bleach. I have never, to my knowledge, bought bleach. I have no idea who or what Clorox is, nor do I care and nor, I suspect, will I ever. I don't know what's in a bleach, I don't want to know, and I don't know who makes it and nor do I care. I don't want to be told about it, and certainly not in some saccharine coated smarmy look how fucking erudite and enthusiastic I am haven't I got a big one tone by some bouffant hairdo without two brain cells to rub together as if I give a fuck.

The absolutely *last* thing I would ever want to do with my more expensive than you could possibly believe Internet connection would be to look for, look at, or be spammed with, anything to do with fucking bleach!

I would rather suck sand.

I'm also just nuts enough to think maybe a lot of other people out there aren't that different from me. I know that's shamefully 19th century of me, but hey - nobody's perfect, huh?

I recall once reading a piece by a guy who talked about the Wrigleys Man. The Wrigleys Man would visit his store and he'd say (to the Wrigleys Man) "How many cases you got for me today?" None of this can I help you with the presentation shit. None of this how many cases do you want rubbish. None of this we've got some exciting new flavours mucky mucking. This is what you get, take it or fuck off. The Wrigleys Man was The Man. Wrigleys owned the market and every damned soul that sold was beholden to them.

But slowly the world changed. Slowly, retailers acquired knowledge about what sold and where and when. Slowly, point of sale systems delivered to them intimate knowledge of what was selling, where it sold best, and how much they could sell how fast. Slowly, information systems evolved to give even deeper insight into the behaviour of different products within their stores.

The Wrigleys Man ain't The Man no more. At least one retailer, according to this perhaps apocryphal account, remembers the depredations he suffered at the hands of a supplier who thought tomorrow never comes. The Wrigleys man, apparently, now earns his living like any other salesman; he tries, as much as he is able, to please his customers to some degree not sufficiently marginally inferior to his competition so that changing suppliers would be worth the hassle.

Transfers of power can and do happen. They typically happen with most catastrophic effect to people who think they can't happen. Think British Empire, think fall of Singapore, think - hell, just think! Even if all you say is absolutely 100% genuine take it to the bank true and correct in every respect, and Locke is no more than a living parody of Sesame Streets' Animal, i.e. hairy, smelly, and mildly entertainingly loud for the first five minutes, I'd still look into it.

Sure, all Gods chilluns gots ta take care a bizzz-niss. I gotta make dough. I have the enviable task of living with a beautiful woman and a 7 year old girl neither of whom understand that you need to spend less moola than you earn. When I as a one man business talk with my customers about their business, I tell them I understand the need for a margin of value. I understand that businesses whose employees don't deliver more value than they consume don't stay in business for long. (Only the government and CEO's can do that indefinitely, apparently). I give them my commitment that they *will* get more value in return for paying me my fees than it costs them to do so. That is how they make a profit.

But if you want a piece of the dough that I make, let me tell you, it ain't coming your way in return for no flyers in my letterbox. You ain't getting it in return for the 47 emails in my Hotmail Inbox today touting Viagra, Girls With Girls!, Make Money Fast, Online Casino (Free $20 Stake Money), Human Growth Hormone, Big Jugs!, Lose Weight Fast, Hi - I'm Suzy, spam, spam, Spam, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM. Nor for the 20 or so that invade my "private" email address each day.

No Sir. Over. My. Dead. Body.

You ain't getting it for "Imagine this liquid is Colgate Toothpaste, and your teeth are this chalk. See, it *does* get in!" on the TV.

No. Not now, not ever.

You ain't getting it for Radio ads: "As Seen on TV!"

No way, No how.

Speak to me like I'm a fucking intelligent autonomous human being or fuck right off! I *will* have your respect and your consideration or there will be NO SALE!

Now, you may well conclude that I'm the lone voice of whatever, lunacy or reason, take your pick. But like I say, I'm at least fucked up enough to think I ain't so different from anyone else out there.


That is why (that is why),
That is why, (that is why),
You are my sugar-diddy.
- Otis Day and The Nights, in the movie Animal House.


P.S. "Marek J" ? You got anymore of those emails, you send em to me. I need to fucking swear more.