Gonzo Marketing
I finished reading Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke a few days ago and I must say that I like it. I thought I’d give you a short summary. Many of your will be interested especially as LiveJournal would be one of those Micromarkets, or enablers for such markets, that he is talking about.
He starts by complaining the customization is not personalization but still mass marketing. You are still looking at group preferences that you guess is there. Saying: “Dear John, …” does not make an e-mail personal.
Harvard Business Review included it in their list of the top 10 books of 2001 that made them think.
Important here is that people look at things differently. We might be interested in the same “Category” but that does not mean we are interested in the same thing.
So let me look a bit closer at the book.
Something that is important in the future is collaborative filtering which you can see on amazon in the “People who read this book also liked…” feature. Especially coupled with comments it helps us talk.
It is different from an Ad saying “BUY THIS!”.
To quote from the book:
“on TV, repeated pitches may create brand awareness. On the web, they create brand annoyance. This isn’t the way we’re communicating with each other online. We argue, cajole, we joke, we talk. We tell each other stories. On television, a company has 60 seconds to be clever. But on the web, it has unlimited gigabytes to say what it’s all about and why anyone should give a damn. This isn’t a preview, like a TV ad. It’s the main feature. If you advertise to us on your site once you’ve gotten us there, you’ve lost a prime opportunity to engage us, to converse with us, to tell us a story. You’ve blown it and we won’t be back, no matter how big your banner budget.”
Locke also put this a lot clearer by stating that “online, the market is the competition”.
“mass media are mass because they’re huge. And the way such hugeness is achieved is by appealing to the lowest-common-denominator-tastes in terms of programming content. The program, the content, is merely bait to draw the audience. The real show, the real message, is the advertising. “
Journalism probably has their rule of being imparcial directly in relation to that. Companies don’t want to advertise next to views they can’t support. That’s my view now, but Locke goes on about this stupid impartial bit for an entire chapter. This will get harder for companies with the problem that people can very easily say what they think and people can see that. See LJ’s community during the Sept. 11th attacks. It was a wonderful area to get real views and real opinions and talk. Interact. Here you also see that Locke was one of the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto.
The net changes that. It is here because of interest, of exchange, of stories.
Locke argues that companies need to tab in those micromarkets.
The problem with supporting Micromedia, which might become Micromarkets if you manage to sell to them, is that if 1/10 of 1% of revenue comes from 1 partner then you need 1000 of those partners for reaching the same level of revenue.
The money to support those partners comes out of the advertising budget and big companies can use employees as partners. Common interests unite people; be they customers or employees.
“The fundamental message of marketing must change from “we want your money” to “we share your interests”. In this respect, corporate underwriting is a way — perhaps the only viable way at present — for companies to put their own money where their mouth is.”