Jeff.blog

On “The Cluetrain Manifesto”

Originally posted at: jeffbowen.info/cluetrain/

Taglines:

  • The End of Business as Usual
  • 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 front cover of The Cluetrain Manifesto

Some history

  • Collection of essays
  • 2010 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
  • Update on a prior publication (~y2k )
  • Which itself was an elaboration of a numerically listed set of axioms 95 Theses ( mirrored below )

Top 10 (emphasis mine):

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
  6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
  7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. (see below).
  8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
  9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
  10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Some other gems:

  • #60 Markets want to talk to companies
  • #74 We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
  • #75 If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

Some words of WARNING:

  • #89 We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

..balanced with some levity:

  • #90 Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.

For some context on when these were penned:

  • #92 Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

Critique:

    • Some critics calls this series of publications “cultish” (whatever that means, right?). I chalk that up to the labeling of Manifesto — which I’ve occasionally seen uttered with a negative connotation. The overriding narrative eschews any veneration of central authority and even offers some light ribbing to Deepak Chopra, etc.

 

  • “We technophiles love labels…the problem with labels is they cut off discourse and truncate the process of understanding and exploration” — maybe that’s the case here.

Markets are conversations

  • Transactions are a form of communication
  • At every scale, relationships between an organization and its clientele are an innate part of doing business. Positive and interesting relationships should be fostered.
  • In the “first world”, the transaction tends to matter most, and the relationship least. In the “third world,” the opposite.
  • “..the C in CRM will cease to be a euphamism”:
  • CRM systems typically don’t build relationships as much as they try to fit to a template and increase lock-in and switching costs
  • Free customers are more valuable than captive ones

Meanwhile (particularly in advertising):

  • The Attention Economy:
  • “Low-percentage game”
  • “The proven success rates still involve odds in the lottery range.”
  • The word, ‘bubble’ is thrown around some for good measure.
  • Mostly supply-side (companies buying ads, agencies, media, etc)
  • Consumers are detached.
  • Little or no conversation between the seller and the buyer
  • vs. the Intention Economy:
  • What customers know they want and are ready to pay for.
  • Kind of a “reverse RFP.”
  • “Transaction, we already have. Conversation we are only beginning to develop. Relationship is the wild frontier.”
  • “We need to be more fanatical in our elimination of conversational friction”

Some other Quotes and synopses:

  • “Hyperlinked: Before the Web, computer networks were laid out in advance like well-planned cities. Who got connected to whom and how was all part of the master plan. And once you were connected, there was a recognizable central authority responsible for the whole shebang. The Web isn’t even a little like that. The Web literally consists of hundreds of millions of pages hyperlinked together by the author of each individual page. Anyone can plug in and any page can be linked to any other, without asking permission. The Web is constantly spinning itself — many small pieces loosely joining themselves as they see fit.”
  • Emphasis is placed on “The Web” not just being comprised of an organization’s public sites, but on its intranet as well. Employees are used to operating as above and will do it elsewhere if it’s not facilitated on the Intranet. “YOUR ORGANIZATION IS BECOMING HYPERLINKED. Whether you like it or not. It’s bottom-up; it’s unstoppable.

95 Theses ( source )

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether
    delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or
    humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural,
    uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
  6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
  7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
  8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
  9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
  10. As
    a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized.
    Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
  11. People
    in networked markets have figured out that they get far better
    information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for
    corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
  12. There
    are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about
    their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell
    everyone.
  13. What’s
    happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical
    construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the
    two.
  14. Corporations
    do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To
    their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat,
    literally inhuman.
  15. In
    just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the
    sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and
    artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
  16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
  17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
  18. Companies
    that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person,
    getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are
    missing their best opportunity.
  19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
  20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
  21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
  22. Getting
    a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web
    site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk,
    and a genuine point of view.
  23. Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
  24. Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.
  25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
  26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
  27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.
  28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.
  29. Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”
  30. Brand
    loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is
    inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets
    are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
  31. Networked
    markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can
    change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught
    us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”
  32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.
  33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.
  34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
  35. But first, they must belong to a community.
  36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
  37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
  38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
  39. The community of discourse is the market.
  40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
  41. Companies
    make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most
    are protecting less against competitors than against their own market
    and workforce.
  42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
  43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
  44. Companies
    typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and
    other corporate information that workers are doing their best to
    ignore.
  45. Intranets
    naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by
    engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more
    valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
  46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
  47. While
    this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open
    intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist
    the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
  48. When
    corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules,
    the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the
    conversation of the networked marketplace.
  49. Org
    charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood
    from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be
    handed down from on high.
  50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
  51. Command-and-control
    management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power
    tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
  52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.
  53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
  54. In
    most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably,
    the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and
    control.
  55. As
    policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command
    and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers
    and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
  56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
  57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
  58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.
  59. However
    subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive
    companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively
    preventing these conversations from intersecting.
  60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
  61. Sadly,
    the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually
    hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings
    false—and often is.
  62. Markets
    do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate
    in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
  63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.
  64. We
    want access to your corporate information, to your plans and
    strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not
    settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye
    candy but lacking any substance.
  65. We’re
    also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to
    customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a
    script.
  66. As
    markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our
    information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports
    and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
  67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
  68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?
  69. Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.
  70. If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.
  71. Your
    tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t
    recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re
    already elsewhere.
  72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.
  73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
  74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
  75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.
  76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
  77. You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.
  78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
  79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.
  80. Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.
  81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?
  82. Your
    product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your
    corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your
    CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?
  83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
  84. We
    know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you
    have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?
  85. When
    we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have
    such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people
    we’d turn to.
  86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are
    your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the
    clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million
    dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s
    job.
  87. We’d
    like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it
    would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.
  88. We
    have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time
    to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to
    be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
  89. We
    have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some
    other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting,
    more fun to play with.
  90. Even
    at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most
    trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more
    true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.
  91. Our
    allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and
    acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part
    in this world, also have no future.
  92. Companies
    are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this
    market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
  93. We’re
    both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate
    our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really
    just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work
    from both sides to take them down.
  94. To
    traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused,
    may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We
    have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
  95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.