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EGR - Adventures in Infiltration
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Christopher Locke
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Nov 03, 2000 08:06 PST
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Many will call me an adventurer -- and that I am,
only one of a different sort: one of those who
risks his skin to prove his platitudes.
Che Guevara
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Valued Terrorists:
We are purposely leaving the usual nasty language out of this brief
communiqué so that it may successfully penetrate the profanity filters
ringing the corporations most desperately in need of our sage advice
on chinchilla ranching. Please take pity on all those poor souls less
fortunate than yourself who are still languishing in B-Schools and
Board Rooms. Deluge them with copies of this email.
Harvard Business Review
November-December, p. 187
http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/hbr/novdec00/R00610.html
BOOKS IN REVIEW
Smart Customers, Dumb Companies
Christopher Locke
Reprint R00610
Customers today are being bombarded with an overwhelming array of
choices. To alleviate customer frustration, say Steven Cristol and
Peter Sealey in Simplicity Marketing, companies should stop
creating new brands and product extensions. Better to consolidate
product and service functions by following a four R approach:
replace, repackage, reposition, and replenish.
That's an outmoded, dictatorial view of markets, says Christopher
Locke. Far from being stymied by choices, customers are rapidly
becoming smarter than the companies that pretend to serve them. In
this networked economy, people are talking among themselves, and
that changes everything.
Locke predicts we'll see a growing number of well-defined
micromarkets -- groups of customers converging in real time around
entertaining and knowledgeable voices -- such as NPR's car guys and
the Motley Fool investment site. "Micromedia" Web sites will
replace traditional advertising because they'll provide credible
user-supplied news about products and services. Locke contends that
an open exchange of information solves the "problem" of choice much
better than manipulative strategies like simplicity or even
permission marketing.
Companies can participate in micromarkets through what Locke dubs
"gonzo marketing." If Ford, for example, discovers that a subset of
its employees are organic gardeners, it may offer support to a big
independent organic-gardening Web site with donations and employee
volunteers. This marketing effort would be driven not by
advertising managers but by people with genuine interest in each
micromarket, so it would have credibility with customers. With
gonzo marketing, both companies and their markets will benefit.
Yours in the Shining Path of the Cosmic Rutabaga!
The Management
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