The Cluetrain Manifesto at 10: Think like a human

Transactions are dead. Long live relationships. Service is the new marketing. I'm listening to our good friend Deb Schultz at a conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto. For those of you who haven't read it, it's an unbelievably prescient look at the ways in which four guys--Doc Searls, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine and David Weinberger--believed the Internet would affect markets:

"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."

So, ten years later, what's changed?

From a technology perspective, oh-so-much. Tools, tools, tools: Facebook, Twitter, blah, blah blah. But Deb asks some probing questions of the assembled crew, all of whom (we'd like to believe anyway), purport to know something about marketing and even, uh, social media.

For example: if customers are supposedly so important to companies, why is it that the people who deal directly with customers are usually the least trained, and with the least control? Why, when evaluating social media programs, do we insist on a transactional approach--ROI--to evaluate what is essentially a relationship? (I can hear it now: "Honey, can you please quantify the benefits of our relationship in 2008? What? But I gave you flowers on Valentine's Day! Wait!! Come back!!!")

Okay, so these are rhetorical questions, and we all know the answer: financial reality. But what happens as we start to realize that financial reality is headed in a different direction--multiple directions--all at once?

As Roy Scheider said in Jaws: "I think we're gonna need a bigger boat."

Comments

[Ted Shelton]

Thanks for coming Susan!