Gonzo Marketing Winning Through Worst Practices
Gonzo Marketing Winning Through Worst Practices
Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Perseus Books Group (October, 2002) Language: English ISBN: 0738207691 Product Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches The coauthor of the no-more-business-as-usual blockbuster The Cluetrain Manifesto–which basically told Net-age marketers to stop talking at their markets and start conversing with them–follows up with a book that’s more a highly entertaining, nimbly erudite screed against our current mass-market, mass-media culture than it is a recipe book for e-commerce marketing success in the post-cyberboom era. Writing in a paler imitation of the profanely irreverent, freely associative “gonzo” journalism style pioneered by his obvious idol Hunter S. Thompson, Locke starts with the by-now-familiar idea that old-style mass-marketing “broadcast” advertising just won’t work on the Web. Indeed, he says, conventional print-ad tactics as embodied online by banners and pop-ups might actually generate more ill will than sales, and that’s! why companies must use the Web to somehow enjoin their products and services to the quirky niche interests of the gazillion individual cybercommunities (or “micromarkets”) whose greatest advantage for marketers is how freely and speedily their members talk among themselves, touting a brand when and if it’s truly deserved. Useful examples of such enjoinment don’t appear until a slim, penultimate chapter, and they are mostly theoretical in nature, e.g., what if Ford, after giving its employees worldwide free home computers and Net access (which it did), got all of them who were into organic gardening to infiltrate organic-gardening Web communities to push (via the subtle art of persuasion, one supposes) the niftiness of Ford pickups for organic gardeners? Truth be told, Locke seems more like a social critic or humanist at heart than a marketing consultant, and his essential disdain for corporations (which are anti-human, he declares, despite all their philanthropic tootle) leaves the reader wondering whether he really wants e-commerce to effectively pervade the Web’s truly democratic, populist microcommunities for its own purposes. As his wonderfully cranky cult Web zine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, and his alter ego therein, RageBoy, have proven, the man’s a smart, witty, broadly read cyberpundit. In Gonzo Marketing, he tweaks everyone from Disney, Time Warner AOL, and IBM to fellow biz-book writers like Seth Godin (Permission Marketing), and if you read it first for its own eclectic, acerbic delights and second for a postboom e-marketing primer, you’ll be rightly pleased.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars The one book your boss doesn’t want you to read
If you ever thought you needed permission to have and express your own thoughts, this book is it.
Razor sharp, it cuts through centuries of accepted wisdom bringing the modern marketplace up to speed with today’s reality and it’s not flattering to those who thought they had the marketplace nailed.
In almost every respect, Chris Locke’s observations are an accurate look not so much at the broad spectrum of what mainstream media considers the marketplace, but the actual marketplace as it really is - you and me and every individual on the planet. It’s all about what makes us tick and the things we like and dislike and what moves us and doesn’t.
It’s a wake-up call in the corridors of power and the residents thereof had better pay attention because this book is not merely addressing their audience, it’s addressing their subordinates.
This is the book that puts the voice back in the little person.
A word of caution:
Do NOT lend this book because you won’t get it back.
3 Stars Starts off promising… ends poorly
Wow! This book was like a breath of fresh air and very vindicating — saying everything that I’d been yelling at my bosses for ages.
And then, midway through the second disc, the author seemed to go into fits of hysterics, talking about duality, spirituality, and eCommerce. Where did this come from? Until this awful turn, it was a great listen.
1 Star This is a terrible book
Not even badly researched … it seems to be un-researched. Offers nothing new. Steals cleverness and cachet wherever it can, but lands flat. The audiobook is read by the author. How many times do we have to say it: HIRE AN ACTOR … HIRE SOMEONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO USE THEIR VOICE. It isn’t expensive and makes an enormous difference. Locke’s voice is monotone, soporific, and seems designed to simply drive coffin-nails into his tired material.
3 Stars A Little Underwhelming and Hard to Follow
I read this books just a couple of weeks after reading The Cluetrain Manifesto, which I really enjoyed. This book seems to be a practical response to Cluetrain for marketers. Some of the ideas are very interesting, and I actually learned a few things about marketing (I am a non-marketer), but I had a very difficult time finishing the book. Locke seems to write in the long, seemingly drug-induced style of Jack Kerouac. This is fun for a while, but as previous reviewers have stated, as soon as the reader expects some “meat” to his arguments (fuzzy as they may be), he continues on in a kind of mystical muse. I got stuck here for a while, finally finished it, and didn’t feel like I got any more out of it.
Taken in spirit, the ideas presented here are pretty good, if not somewhat utopian (euphoric?). But I have one problem with the whole “don’t act like you are a marketer, even if you are” thing: you are still a marketer trying to sell something! Wouldn’t intellectual honesty just be to say, “Hey, I sell trucks for GM, but I like organic gardening, too”, instead of working in a kind of covert fashion. Perhaps marketers should include some disclaimer like “This is an attempt to sell a product. All communications will be used for that purpose.” Mr. Locke would probably disagree with my interpretation, but this seems to be the practical outcome of his ideas.
In summary: The Cluetrain Manifesto is good, the spin-off (this book) is alright.
5 Stars This is a book that should be followed in spirit
First off, this book presents several examples of best practices (”case studies”), including United Colors of Beneton, Motley Fool, and Ford.
Second of all, Locke doesn’t hold any marketer’s hand, and yes, he can be pretty brutal at times. He assumes, quite rightly, that you didn’t get into this job to help humanity, you got into to get a paycheck. That’s not cynicism, that’s intellectual honesty, and if you can’t handle it, you’ll never be anything but mediocre.
Essentially, Locke’s main thesis is: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEDIOCRE MARKETING AND GREAT MARKETING IS INTELLECTUAL HONESTY. And if it takes him 200 pages to make this point, then the fault lies in how much we have grown accustomed to believing our own B.S., just because its easier that way. How my corporations have lied themselves into bankruptcy? How many bad projects have you seen go forward because everyone was too scared to get in the way?
This book is a bricolage of good points and great ideas. As a consistant system, it fails.In the real world, Locke’s ideas are completely unworkable, IF YOU FOLLOW THEM VERBATIM. Like any idealistic manifesto, it’s got its fair share of hyperbole.
However, in terms of a Marketing Philosophy, it’s brilliant. Whenever I get discouraged, I read this book. It reminds me of a comment David Ogilvy once made, “The consumer isn’t a moron, she’s your wife”, meaning that advertisers and marketers should treat their audiences with respect and dignity (or else).
Filed under: Making Money On the Internet Books