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RE: Godin's Idea Virus
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Doc Searls
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Jul 17, 2000 17:38 PDT
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More thoughts...
While I should be doing something else, I'm also looking through the
.pdf of Seth's new book. My thoughts...
1) Open sourcing a book like this is a ballsy move. Hats off to the
guy. He not only gets it, but gives it as well.
2) His Web site shows he's practicing what he preaches. He's asking
permission to start conversations, and providing a space for
discussion -- all in a very useful and uncomplicated way. Hats off.
3) Permission Marketing and the Ideavirus are about as far as
marketing can go from traditional marketing, and still be marketing.
Yet it's still marketing. It's still derived from the verb *to
market*, which is concerned with moving goods. It's still coming from
the shipper's point of view. Not from the shopper's. Not from the
human beings who are neither shippers nor shoppers, and who choose to
see themselves in neither role, even when they *are* shopping. I was
at the Peet's Coffee here in Santa Barbara yesterday, marveling at
the range and passion of conversation at the tables around the store
and outside in the sun. "Are these 'consumers?'" I thought. No way.
They might be consuming coffee in a literal sense, but in about ten
other senses they were doing something else. Mostly making culture.
Let's face it: the Culture of Coffee would not be culture if it was
only about consumption. It's about connoisseurship, conversation,
politics, entertainment, neighborhood. Peets knows that. I think even
Starbucks knows that. And Seth does too. But marketing is his beat.
It's not Cluetrain's.
4) Cluetrain's beat is markets, not marketing. It's about how markets
are smarter than companies and getting smarter faster, mostly through
conversations that include, but are not necessarily "driven," by
suppliers.
5) As I read through "Unleashing the Ideavirus," I am struck by how
much it's still an in-between step. "Permission Marketing" broke huge
ground for marketing manners, and "Ideavirus" does more of the same.
Seth says some very clueful things about customers (e.g. "the most
successful ideas are those that spread and grow because of the
customer's relationship to other customers -- not the marketer's to
the customer."), but he also continues to talk about markets in terms
of "consumers," and "audiences" a marketer should "target,"
"dominate" and "control." (e.g. "One of the most elegant ways to take
advantage of the new tight networking among consumers is to identify
the powerful members of a hive and make it as easy as possible for
them to tell each other about an ideavirus.")
6) I've never been crazy about the viral thing. "Viral" is a good
adjective for the epidemiology of fashion, and of ideas. But hey, so
is cancer. I've always liked fire, which has a similar problemL good
ideas do spread like fire, and they do tend to burn out bad ideas;
but the metaphor fails to respect the constructive, positive nature
of ideas -- or at least of good ones. Conversation is its own best
metaphor. We marketed Cluetrain in the manner of the John Hiatt song:
"Let's give them something to talk about." Seth means the same thing,
I'm sure. But he's still talking New School with some old language.
7) It's still very, very early. It's a huge stretch for business to
realize that the Net facilitates a much bigger revolution in demand
than in supply, that it can't help but make markets smarter, and
smarter faster, than the companies that supply them. The notion that
companies can still "drive" and "dominate" markets is almost quaint.
Even Seth's best on-the-Net examples are hardly on the scale that
Ford, Coke and even Starbucks at their most successful have enjoyed.
The Net isn't a new medium. It's a new world. And business isn't the
only one making it. Not by a long shot.
8) So I think Seth's ideas are a huge evolutionary leap beyond just
about everything else out there that calls itself marketing. But I'm
still not hopeful about marketing as a species. To survive it will
have to turn into something else -- something native to markets.
Doc
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Doc Searls do-@searls.com http://www.searls.com
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