Space Invaders (the Death of Conversation)
Markets are conversations. Then Marketers shout. Thus Marketers screw up conversations.
The logic is overwhelming.
10 years ago, a nice book called The Cluetrain Manifesto was published. It changed everything.
Wait.
That needs rephrasing.
10 years ago, a nice book called The Cluetrain Manifesto was published. Some of us thought it would change everything. (In my case it was the first Marketing book I ever read, back in 2000 -in English and while I studied music and worked for a construction company).
The book, in case you live in a cave, starts with 95 theses. The first one reads:
Markets are conversations.
What a revelation! So obvious. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, the time of "online friends", now that the blogs raised and died it is apparently so true.
True, but wrong.
(Yes, I love contradictions)
Marketers have invaded spaces where people lurk (it is the means to the end, right?). They have done so ever since the advent of mass media. When radio become popular advertising surged as almost natural. Then came TV.
Of course those types of media inherently go in one direction; so if someone did not like the presence of publicity there wasn't much they could do.
Then came the internet.
And something seemed to be different. The advent of the social web brought a promise of a different type of Marketing. One that would listen. One that would talk looking into the customer's eye. One that would be a conversation, much like Cluetrain proposed.
And then us (marketers) screwed it up. Conversations didn't quite have the impact we were used to with mass media. We needed more bang for the buck. We wanted more. We started shouting again. We went back from conversation to publicity.
But Marketers are not the only ones to be blamed, the recipients share part of the shame. Both in an active and a passive way.
The public is to blame because it allows their spaces to be invaded by vacuous marketing messaging. The most bluntly example of this becomes apparent with the usage of client-generated content to power marketing campaigns. This would be more acceptable if consent were not tacit but deliberate, but that is usually not the case. Maybe letting advertisements into our own private spaces is a price too high to pay to use many services.
The audience is also to blame because many have tried to take advantage of the few marketers that actually tried to do things differently, of the couple of crazy dudes that actually tried to talk. When I read news that state that a mommy blogger tried to bribe George Smith (Online Marketer) for a pair of crocs at BlogHer I feel saddened.
Thus when a Marketer tries to have a conversation this comes out as the result.
Yet that is deserved. Seth Godin's phrase "all marketers are liars" still applies. Or should I say: Applies today more than ever before.
In the mass media reign days lies were openly displayed and people "bought" them somewhat knowingly. Today things have become more dense, obscure and mangled. Most marketers have a discourse that says that they are part of the conversation, ("hey we even have a corporate blog!"), they find alternative ways to let the customers know about products and services ("we just placed a banner on facebook and MSN!") and have youth and massive appeal with lower than average investment ("we have this viral video you'll love") .
It is all lies. At least on most cases.
Viral videos are pushed to front pages using fake accounts and bots. Advertising, even on the internet, is just that: friggin advertising, not a "new way to deliver the message". Yes, even if you publish your Ad on a social network, it is still an ad. Most corporate blogs delete anything resembling negative comments; so much for open conversation. Not to mention the shallowness of the content and the fact that PR firms handle that instead of the actual, flesh and bone employees.
Metrics are inflated on a daily basis. Results are overrated. Everything is false.
Phony Social Network users, fake fans, non-existing facts and figures, pay-per-post. So much for transparency. So much for conversation.
I don't know about you, but when I talk I don't shout. Shouting defeats the purpose.
The marketers excuse for such type of behaviors is that, amidst so much noise, if they don't go above the mean murmur they would pass by inadvertently. If that is the case maybe what you are saying is not that interesting. Screaming about it is not going to make it any more appealing (or true, or conversational).
But then again, coming up with relevant content and doing thinks that can go "viral" just due to to their own weight and creativity requires thinking, inspiration and hard work. Those things are not readily available.
Thus it is Mediocre (social) Marketers and irresponsible customers who have killed conversation for the rest of us.
Thanks, much appreciated.
Now, lets cut the crap and lets all just say what we are really doing.
The influencers’ paradoxes
People in the ranks of alltop, so-called "gurus" such as Scoble or Jeremiah are what we consider as "influencers" in the under-under-under world of web-oh-two(too)-cool. This guys have crept out of the background noise of the bloggosphere and twitterati and made themselves more prominent than the Nerdy Average Joe that lurks the very same services this influencers use.
With raging ranks of followers and some fans that would make Tommy Lee jealous (I've seen commenters praise and sustain some of the most outrageous and, dare I say, dumb remarks) the influencers get an amplification power similar to the one achieved by Spinal Tap's "mine go to eleven" boxes.
The effect of this is quite simple: more people listen (and reply) to this guys than they do to the other "participants in the conversation". Some call that higher reach.
The outcome is a paradox.
Remember the days of mass media? Remember all the Social-web-2.0-power-to-the-masses fuzz? The premise was that everyone could be a Journalist, everyone could have a voice.
Certainly everyone can have a voice. But not everyone's voice can be heard. Since there is so much content out there there is no way everyone can get an audience. I'll agree that there is content out there that is of little or no appeal to most of the audience, but there is quite a deal of excellent and original writing that goes unnoticed.
The issue becomes that the same means that was (allegedly?) allowing a revolution in communications is now fostering individuals and groups of people that resemble more and more traditional media. The only difference is that they never had their content in print to begin with.
All the top-ranked blogs out there have heavy editorial lines. On the other end of things many newspapers and magazines are relying heavily on blogs and have opened comments on their usual content. The difference between those is becoming harder to tell. There are hints that tell them apart, such as very segmented content (most blogs deal with one general theme, whereas newspapers cover tons of different topics), very visible faces / personalities behind blogs and a general lean on the side of bloggers to share opinions more explicitly.
The way Marketing bucks have to deal with this popular blogs is resembling more and more that of traditional media. Or maybe worst. But that's ok.
Now, to round up the paradox idea -if you haven't understood what the main paradox is so far: bloggers resemble journalists and vice versa, even when they both shout out loud that they are quite different- yet another issue pops up when bloggers monetize their content, and while doing so their so-called transparency is put to the trial. I'm affraid many have succumbed to journalism's worst sin: selling of. Of course this is not the case with all bloggers.
The other fairly visible tendency I see in some of this influencers is that they are tending to rely on repeating themselves and using the same couple of formulas over and over again. One of the overly-used ones is deceiving the readership into believing they are participants when, all truth be said, they are being leached.
There is a fine line between calling for interaction and dialogue and abusing those who follow you to get content and ideas.
It might be just that I am a cynic. Very cynic.
This post belongs to the shifting times, blurring lines series. Read them all or learn what the series is about.Edit: David, makes some similar remarks over his blog as well.