“The Cluetrain Manifesto”

Authors Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls & David Weinberger, in their book “The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual” predict that social media and specifically blogs will change the fundamentals of business communications.  They believe that “markets are conversations” and social media is a powerful new mechanism that will allow buyers and sellers to engage in on-line conversations to the benefit of both groups.  Their “manifesto” provides a call-to-action for sellers and buyers to meet and converse in this new digital frontier.

Essentially this means that for goods and services to be exchanged people, not corporations, S-Corps, or LLCs, need to speak to each other.  In the old market square of yester-year sellers brought their goods to the market to meet buyers.  They argue that today with the help of social media buyers and sellers are engaging in the conversation of business in global virtual market places.

 “The Cluetrain Mainfesto” provides a list of 95 theses to help usher in this new area of free flowing market conversations.  There are too many to list but I’d like to show you a few of my favorites

1-Markets are conversations.                                                                                                         

2-Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in the human voice.                                                                                                                                    

19-Companies can now communicate with their markets directly.  If they blow it, it could be their last chance.                                                                                                           

38-Human communities are based on discourse ¾on human speech about human concerns.                                                                                                                                           

83-We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from “The Wall Street Journal.”                                                                                                               

95-We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Most of the rest of the 95 theses run in this same line of thought.  Essentially they say that the companies that aren’t talking in the new virtual global market place conversation are going to place themselves at a competitive and economic disadvantage compared to those that do take part in the conversation.

I actually agree with the authors and many of the theses and other points.  However I’m not convinced that “The Cluetrain Manifesto” is going help sweep in a new era.  I feel that much of the impact “Cluetrain” might have on the business is diminished by its whiny tone.

The complete list of 95 theses can be found here if you’re interested.

 

Blogs; changing business communications?

In “Naked Conversations,” by Robert Schoble and Shel Israel, they advocate that blogging is changing the way business approaches communications on all levels.  The title “Naked Conversations” refers to the transparency of corporate blogging with their customer rather than hiding behind politically correct corporate speak, PR lingo, or buzz words.  The authors claim that honest straight forward conversations with customers and other stake holders are the trend of communications and benefit both parties.

They cite many examples of companies that have successfully used blogs and where a blog may have helped a company during a crisis communications situation.  Two examples that stick in my mind are Microsoft and Kryptonite.  Mainly because I use many Microsoft products and being a cyclist I used a Kryptonite lock at one time.

In the Microsoft example Schoble and Israel show how through blogging Microsoft was able to shed or seriously diminish the “evil empire” reputation Microsoft had acquired of many years.  When customers, suppliers and contractors where engaged with individual bloggers within Microsoft they came to know the individual employees working on different projects with different goals, objectives and problems.  Before Microsoft started blogging people just thought every employee as part of machine.  Afterwards they were people.

Kryptonite on the other had a very negative experience as they got steamrolled by bloggers.  Kryptonite was a leading manufacturer of bicycle locks.  A customer with a serious issue called the company to tell them about a design flaw in one of their most popular locks.  After not receiving a response he post directions on popular on-line bike forums about how to pick the locks with a Bic pen.   The directions spread to more widely read blogs.  The company, unaware of the blogosphere, worked in a traditional communications strategy.

Schoble and Israel state “By ignoring the blogosphere, Kryptonite gave millions of people the impression that the company had neither sympathy nor remedy for its customers.”  Eventually a video of how the pick the lock ended up on the blogosphere.  A little over a week after the first posting of the issue Kryptonite announced that it would replace all “Bic-pickable” locks at an estimated cost of $10 million.  If Kryptonite had been engaged in the blogsphere and the cycling community knew they were working on the problem could the outcome have been different?  We’ll never know but I suspect Kryptonite’s customers would have been less critical in this situation if they had engaged their customers through blogging.  Kryptonite had huge customer loyalty that was quickly lost when customers believed the company was treating them indifferently.  (I no longer use a Kryptonite lock myself.)

I believe that blogs are a powerful communications tools and that government, NGOs, and business will begin using blogs to communicate directly and more effectively with customers and stakeholders.  I do feel that blogging rather than wiping out communications practices will become one more tool in the savvy communicator’s bag that he or she will use to get messages out rather than replacing what we view as traditional communications practices today.

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The picture of the blogosphere is courtesy Matthew Hurst.

For an explanation of Matthew’s picture see “Map: Welcome to the Blogosphere” by Stephen Ornes.