The Cluetrain Manifesto
by Adrian Hanft, (11 comments)
I have to admit that The Cluetrain Manifesto, tackles a subject that has really been resonating with me lately. Cluetrain’s premise is that the internet is fundamentally changing the way business functions. Written by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger way back in 1999, the manifesto’s prophecy still seems to be extremely relevant. Yes it is dated, but forget that they don’t mention blogs, rss feeds, or other revolutions taking place online today. Those recent advances should point you to the conclusion that these rebels were on to something big that continues to change our world today. If you aren’t familiar with The Cluetrain Manifesto, you can get a decent sample from www.cluetrain.com. There you will find the first chapter of the book as well as the 95 theses it is based on.
Cluetrain says that companies will cease to exist unless they learn to speak to their customers in a human voice. This really is a monumental task that flies in the face of decades of brand theory and traditional guerilla marketing. Another theme that is hammered throughout the book is that the internet has introduced a powerful new force into the marketplace: the human voice. We were talking about this a couple weeks ago on Clinton’s post in relation to the power of blogs. To quote myself (I know that’s arrogant, but get over it):
“The voiceless masses that read blogs are finding that they aren?t alone. That may seem trivial, but don?t take it for granted. When a reader finds the courage to make their voice heard, whether in a blog of their own or by leaving a comment, this event is extremely empowering. A community forms. Eventually, what was once the voiceless masses transforms into a mobilized population. I think we are approaching the tipping point where this starts to redefine the institutions of publishing, news, advertising, politics, religion, and entertainment.”
In attempt to push this review into a discussion, more and more sources are saying that advertising is dead. I read an article in Wired last month called The Decline of Brands. (Seth Godin weighs in on that discussion here). That followed on the heals of an article about how the 18-34 male is reinventing advertising. Even if you dismiss all this talk as propaganda, I think it is hard to avoid a conclusion at the very least that advertising is changing. So how does this affect the design community? Do you believe the hype? Is our industry in for a change? Will the new world have a place for design? Or do you just think this whole thing is just a theory to sell books and magazines and make a few authors sound smart?
Comments (11)
Bennett said:
If this book were right on target, traditional advertising wouldnít be around anymore. They made some great points, but it wasnít worth an entire book. Iím glad I read it, but I was extremely annoyed at many points in this book. How many times do they have to tell us the sky is falling? The sky may be changing colors, but it is still there. The Internet is changing the way some businesses are dealing with some people. Lets face it, not everybody is wired.
This book could be summed up in a couple of sentences instead of 95 Theses and a long-winded book. 1.Corporations need to listen to consumers because they now have a way of communicating to each other and the rest of the world. 2. If corporations donít start to sound more human they will become irrelevant and outdated.
Now you donít need to hear these four authors complaining about the big bad corporation for hours on end.
These authors tried so hard to sound ìhumanî and conversational that they start to sound like high schoolers whining about the horrible teachers that actually want them to be productive.
I could go on and on, but I will leave it at that for now.
Posted on November 16, 2004
Adrian said:
Bennett, How did club(red) go? Did most of the people think like you did, or did some of them agree with Cluetrain? I agree they restated their premise in many different ways, but I think they had to for fear of getting laughed out of town. Now that they aren’t the only people talking about the subject, it seems like they went overboard.
Just because traditional advertising is still around doesn’t mean they were wrong. The wired article I pointed to was showing how the power of brands has been steadily losing ground in the past decade. Similar stats show that companies aren’t getting the return on their advertising dollars that they used too. Why? Because advertising isn’t working. In a way, it is a case of supply and Demand. The market is flooded with advertising, and the result is ads don’t work as well as they used to. There will always be a place for traditional advertising, but companies can’t expect it to carry their business. You are correct that not everyone is wired to the internet, but it is only a matter of time.
Posted on November 16, 2004
Bennett said:
Adrian,
For those of you that don’t know, club(red) is our local AIGA graphic design book club. Club(red) went very well in my opinion. I don’t think anyone really liked the book in our little chapter, but it did start some good discussions. Maybe David will tell us how their discussion went.
…not everyone is wired to the internet, but it is only a matter of time. I would disagree with even this idea. I am sure that someday everyone will be hooked into the Internet, but people won’t use it in the same way. Not everyone is going to be corporate police, sitting at their computer waiting to keep the corporations in line. Some people will probably just use it for email and eBay.
I agree that traditional advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be. It is still the most effective way to get certain peoples attention. Corporations and advertising agencies need to pinpoint those that are immune to traditional advertising and those that are not.
There is an interesting article relating to this discussion in the November 8, 2004 MediaWeek. It is called “High On the Blog” and it is about advertising and blogs. The author, Catharine Taylor interviewed Nick Denton and Nick said this “For a product that has to rely on Buzz… I think blogs make sense for those kinds of advertisers.” The rest of the article for the most part supports Adrian’s viewpoint, but I think Denton’s comment is important to keep in mind when we talk about this subject. The Internet reaches a certain segment very effectively and likewise with traditional media.
Posted on November 16, 2004
Adrian said:
“Some people will probably just use it for email and eBay.”
Ebay is a huge exampe of how internet is changing business. You don’t need advertising if your entire business is run through ebay. Even if all you used the internet for was email, you are still going to be a more networked consumer than without the internet. I think we take it for granted how much the internet has changed us as consumers. I guess I can’t speak for all the other consumers, just myself. This is what makes me say advertising is failing for me:
If you expect me to spend my valuable time looking at your comanies ad, you have to make it worth my time. Since I can’t control the hundreds of ads I see each day, I learn to ignore them. An ad only breaks through my filter for 2 reasons. Everything else is invisible. The first kind is so terrible or intrusive that I notice it. That is not going to be an effective ad. The other kind is extremely well done and rewards me for taking notice. There are only a handful of these types of ads out there, and even those aren’t going to make me buy something without knowing more about the product. That is where the internet comes into play. I think this reaction to advertising is relatively new and relatively common. Maybe a more likely scenario than traditional advertising ceasing to exist is that companies will be forced to make better ads. I still think even good advertising will never be as powerful as before the internet.
About club(red)… Nobody liked the book? That couldn’t have been very fun. You must have missed me being there to shake things up.
Is that MediaWeek article online anywhere?
Posted on November 16, 2004
Bennett said:
Like I said before, I don’t deny that advertising is changing. My main problem with this book is all of the exaggerating and overstating. I get very annoyed with apocalyptic prophecies, and this is what this book mainly is. It is great to be passionate about a subject, but it is also great to actually do some in depth research on a subject. Research goes beyond personal experiences about that one time when you had a really cool job at Sun Micro Systems.
Most of the examples they did give are for very large purchases and technology. These give a very heavy slant to products that lend themselves to the Internet. It is obvious why someone would go to the Internet to look for customer reviews to buy software or a new computer. Making a large purchase like a vehicle obviously gives people extra motivation to go online and get some product reviews. There is no way that I am going to start looking online for reviews of the ketchup or t-shirt that I am thinking about buying.
This may be getting a bit tedious, but my point is that these authors make too grand of statements. When you make that many grandiose statements and a couple of them come true, some people only point to the ones that come true and call them profits. You know what they say about blind squirrels.
Posted on November 17, 2004
Bennett said:
Here a couple of entertaining links. A big thank you to Professor Mark Hartman for bringing these to my attention. Enjoy.
The Gluetrain Manifesto
Thomas Scoville review of the book
Posted on November 17, 2004
Adrian said:
I always get a kick out of Seth Godin. I added a link in my post above to his recent comments about the death of brands.
Posted on November 18, 2004
Adrian said:
It’s kind of weird when things like this fall in your lap. On page 1 of BtoB I read an article about marketers joining the blogging dialogue. Sun Microsystem’s chief technology evangelist, Simon Phipps, mentions “The Cluetrain Manifesto” and the article goes on to say that Sun has 850 employees who are blogging. (I know Bennett is tired of hearing about cool jobs at Sun, but I thought that was interesting.) It also talks about how receptive Microsoft is towards blogging. I think it is pretty interesting to watch business scrambling to get into the blogging scene. I read earlier today about the growing popularity of the CEO blog. What is the attraction of the blog? Answer: Power.
Posted on November 18, 2004
kadavy said:
I liked the idea behind this book, but I think it could have been about 30 pages long and still conveyed the same idea.
It sure did put alot of emphasis on “the human voice.” I was a bit annoyed when they said that among the things people expect from an e-mail was for it to be “funny.” If the extreme abundance and accessibility of information has changed writing, it is calling for it to be less “funny.” I do appreciate, though, writing that doesn’t have corporate buzzwords like “solutions” in it.
It’s true and great that you can now get more honest opinions, direct from consumers about so many products and services, but can’t things like blogs become as corrupted as television, magazines, and newspapers? I could see a day coming where Amazon.com’s top 500 reviewers start collecting fees from manufacturers and perhaps make a living trying out their products and reviewing them. The result would be reviewers as tied down as popular media’s movie and product reviewers (don’t bite the hand that feeds you). Some bloggers are already worrying about blogging’s corruption by advertising.”
It’s great that the internet has empowered a sort of counter-culture free from such corruption, but as more and more opportunities to “sell-out” arise, who will be still be able to hold on to their values?
Posted on November 20, 2004
Adrian said:
“canít things like blogs become as corrupted as television, magazines, and newspapers?”
No, it can’t. Is there corruption online? Obviously there is, but you can’t compare the corruption online to the corruption of those institutions because they aren’t a network. The equal distribution of power through the network makes it unprofitable to be corrupt. Cluetrain really emphasizes everyone’s ability to recognize the human voice. We are highly tuned to recognize the difference between a person trying to help us out and someone who just wants to sell something. That is why their ins’t a danger of bloggers selling out to advertisers. When a blog sells out, the network knows, and the credibility of the blogger is destroyed. The rewards for earning the respect of the network outweigh any benefit of selling out.
On a side note, one of the great things about Google ads is that you have next to no control over what ads get served up. There isn’t any danger of selling out. In fact, I could write a post bashing online casinos and then make money off the auto generated ads for casinos that get served on my site.
Posted on November 22, 2004
Adrian said:
Here is a good article forcasting the the demise of all newspapers. Seems to fall inline with what we are talking about here…
Posted on November 24, 2004