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Summary: I Want to Believe
Review: Upon finishing Cluetrainer Christopher Locke's masterful Gonzo Marketing, I said, "I want to believe."I suppose I should clarify. After all, I'm a diehard, card-carrying, seen-the-light Cluetrainer. I signed the dotted line. I was among the first to buy the hardback. I wrote a glowing Amazon review. I weigh potential clients by scanning their shelves for that familiar Cluetrain cover. I've referred to it more times than I can remember. So yeah, I am a believer as far as that goes. And, yeah again, I'm a believer in what Locke says in Gonzo Marketing--and he says it so well! Mass markets and their accompanying top-down mass media "buy it" pleas are dead or dying. Business is scurrying to find out why advertising--its lifeblood--is increasingly barren. Fatcat media execs scramble to discover where their audiences have gone as ratings continue a downward plunge, trying ever-more-desperate measures to attract a crowd. Slice-and-dice market segmentation doesn't cut the mustard any longer; niche marketing has broken down under the assault of emerging micromarkets, too tiny for giant marketing campaigns to reach. What's happening to the world we've known for a hundred years? It's simple, says Locke. People are fed up with hype, mass marketing, force-fed selling and its accompanying falderol. We're dying for the sound of a human voice, not some artfully-but-painfully-obviously-crafted tagline. We're tired of the repeated efforts of corporate rustlers to sear their brands in our hearts and minds. We're not mindless automatons who idiotically dispense greenbacks every time we see a commercial!
We want to be known, to be heard, to be respected as individuals, as living, breathing valued human beings, We're finding this on the Web. In Gonzo Marketing, Locke picks up where Cluetrain left off and begins to lead us to the Promised Land. But not by the most direct route. He leads us to various fields of green, to waters still and waters turbulent. He rants, he raves, he whispers and laughs. He laughs a lot--and he cusses too, or he wouldn't be our RageBoy. At times we wonder exactly where it is we're headed... But resist that temptation to jump ahead to the last chapters. For you shall miss many and sundry wonders--wonders that will shed golden light when Brother Chris finally brings us to his apocalypse, his revelation. It's good. It's right. It's even practical (something that Cluetrain wasn't quite ready to be). It might even work. But... I know that corpocracy and its media high priests still haven't got a clue. I've been in the maw, the very belly of the beast. Like Locke, I've buried my ideals and worked in the salt mines of giant firms and media monsters. And while I've found hundreds, nay, thousands of people of like mind, people seeking to express their voice, their ideas, their passion for their work, yearning to actually benefit their employer by employing their gifts and talents and voices on the Web as Locke suggests.... the giant bronze doors to the executive suites remain hermetically sealed, guarded with a flaming sword that bans all entry. Even worse, should we ever reach the inner sanctum we will find that the very foreheads of the top-down, control-at-all-costs commissars are like brass. That's why I say, "I want to believe!" For Locke is right, and his ideas can bear great fruit for companies, workers and employees. Yet the thirst for power and the hunger for dollars and the terror of failing the institutional stockholders hold business and media executives in thrall. I fear it will take a catastrophe of epic proportions to shake them loose. So buy this book. Read it. Now. Before it's too late.
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