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The Cluetrain Manifesto Revisited - Part 1
In April, 1999 Chris Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger wrote “the cluetrain manifesto”, the book that announced the emergence of conversational marketing to the people of earth. The authors maintained that “a powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”
The underlying premise of the book is that new millennium markets are conversations. The members of any market communicate in a very frank, sincere fashion. The conversations are often filled with humor, sarcasm, compliments and vitriol. The primary point is that these conversations exist and in the age of the internet they’ve proliferated. Markets have become intelligent due in large part to the conversations of its members. As the authors put it:
- Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.
So what are businesses to do when this conversation occurs? Can it be controlled? Can it be stopped? Has the art of conversation been taught to new millennium marketers?
In order to answer those questions I thought it might be interesting to take a look back after six years and discuss some of the key points in the Cluetrain Manifesto by examining whether the authors really had a clue in the first place and if so did Corporate America buy it. The book is organized into 95 theses; while we won’t be able to discuss each individually, I thought that I’d at least pick out those that I feel are most relevant for 2005.
Over the past six years we’ve seen the proliferation of web based communities, the emergence of the blogosphere, guerrilla marketing, digital brand building, viral marketing; the list goes on. So consider this part one of a multipart article about conversations, marketing and technology.
Cluetrain Manifesto Theses One: Markets are conversations. We'll discuss this assertion in part 2. What do you think? The cluetrain has left the station.
Markets have always fostered conversation...I guess the only thing different today is the frequency and rate at which conversations take place. There are many more spokes in the conversational wheel now that the Internet has provided the many-to-many connections between conversational end-points.
Published: April 8, 2005 11:50 AM
The interesting part of the Cluetrain Manifesto is the comments it generated on the signatories list. What it did was lift the carpet and expose the kind of real voices hidden under the corporate landscape. No human being can keep up that kind of passion for six years and no one is expected to, ultimately the Cluetrain Manifesto echoed a sentiment that is work-in-progress but which is beginning to surface as we speak, but voice is not the chief ingredient in transformation, it is a 21st Century voice that is key and no one can clearly define what that voice looks like or how it will develop over the next 15 years.
This voice is a very different voice from the one that marked the 20th Century and it will start to lead not simply because corporations realize that life, humanity the customer provide unrealized advantage when they are aligned, but as a new generation that is used to interaction rather than interuption and who are not born of a radical legacy; and who can see through and shake free the mental prison of celebrity culture, take foothold and connect in ordinary global conversations, conversation that have no agenda but which emerge through transformative consequence of interaction and integration. No one is going to lead that change because the forming 21st Century voice represents six billion dots of existence, not six billion dollars of opportunity - a 21st Century voice which will turn markets into significant conversations. Today someone stands up and others follow, a 21st Century voice won't be impressed by who stands up and won't follow leaders, it won't be anarchy, it will be 1-to-1 personal leadership.
It goes without saying that blogworking technologies are doing something as early adopters pitch in but social networking for the masses has not arrived and that crecendo requires global entities to review their education plans and educational agendas. These dynamics are changing as we speak, but its ripples have yet to reach the surface and I think over the next few years we are going to see that the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto were simply way ahead of their time and only rebels keep an ear to the ground, so I guess they heard the future coming - and that is a good thing, because it means someone tried to warn us about the road ahead.
M.
Published: April 8, 2005 01:55 PM
Well done Mark. It's been six years since clue train was published. In my opinion the authors were ahead of most of their readership; not to mention ahead of the technology that would ultimately support the conversational infrastructure. Yet the signs were there in 1999 that the consumer was beginning to lead and not follow. The collective intelligence of the market (and the economy) was ready to grow exponentially.
Oh, by the way, the rebels kept their ear to the rail...
Published: April 8, 2005 03:42 PM
The greatest challenge that has been unleashed by Cluetrain is not that markets are conversations, but that conversations require human beings to be more than markets and suppliers. I say more about this at by Leading Questions blog - http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/leading_questions/2005/04/cluetrain_conve.html
Thanks for bringing attention to this important book. I look forward to the conversation that can take place as you post.
Published: April 13, 2005 04:33 PM
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