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By Michael Neubarth
In 1994, Alan Meckler, CEO of Mecklermedia, hired Christopher Locke away from CMP Media to create MecklerWeb, one of the first online business hubs. I was editor-in-chief of Internet World magazine at Mecklermedia at the time, and Locke wrote a monthly column for Internet World.
In his columns, Locke criticized the corporate mass marketing establishment and chided corporations for their "command-and-control" mentality and tendency to force workers to "check their brains at the door."
For example, in "Power Rap" in November 1994, Locke wrote:
"Those that have smashed the notion of command-and-control hierarchies will have learned to listen. Those that have learned to listen to their own people-and put what they've heard to work-may be qualified to enter into a real discourse with their markets."
Locke saw the Internet as a liberating medium that would empower customers and free them from the shackles of corporate marketing. The Internet, he argued, could be a liberating force for corporations willing to give up top-down control and allow employees to converse with customers, allow customers to have input into products and services, and allow employees have more input into the business. This, he argued, would bring about positive change-better products and services, honest dialogue, happier workplaces.
Foreshadowing the era of social media that has now arrived, Locke wrote that:
"If your people truly understand what they're doing, genuinely care about their work, and are empowered to speak for themselves on your behalf, you could well become a major force in the business of the next century."
MecklerWeb was folded and Locke left Mecklermedia, but he continued to be an outspoken critic of corporate marketing and a proponent of the type of corporate Internet engagement we now see occurring through social media. Indeed, for the last 15 years, Locke has been tirelessly stumping the idea of the social Internet, predicting the downfall of a corporate marketing culture that, in his view, was a dark and evil marketing empire.
Traditional marketing , he wrote in 2001 in "Gonzo Marketing" is "manipulative, intrusive, gimmick-ridden, and inherently dishonest." Marketing, he said, "is a black art - and it's getting blacker by the minute."
Moreover, Locke asserted, "Through the reputation so many corporations have developed for self-serving consumer manipulation, marketers have lost credibility. Today the market is connected, networked. Consumers are talking among themselves."
When the Walls Come Down
Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, many observers say we are witnessing the collapse of the command-and-control power of corporate mass marketing. Moreover, the then-radical vision that Locke and like-minded marketers were articulating in the mid-1990s has been assimilated into the mainstream mindset and messaging of today's marketing, advertising, and PR practitioners.
For example, Edleman PR on its Edelman.com site tells us:
"We believe that the traditional model of top-down communications, where 90%+ of a marketing budget is spent on advertising to talk at people, is simply no longer effective."
Likewise, Burson-Marsteller on its site tells us that:
"Access to new technologies and information has dramatically changed communications, enabling everyone to consume, create, share and edit information on their own terms. This has created a culture that values individual voices over corporate ones and that celebrates participation and has created a need for companies to change the way they have traditionally interacted with stakeholders."
Says Bob Geller, SVP at Fusion PR, on his Flack's Revenge blog writes:
"It has occurred to me that the reason most companies (and corporate marketing departments in particular) just don't get it when it comes to social media is that they are having a hard time leaving behind the rapidly receding world of asymmetrical communications - i.e., of top down, 'command and control' programs, where the marketing department pushes out messages in one direction, generally with and through various media channels."
Visit the Web sites of almost any advertising, PR, and marketing agency and you'll find them saying something similar.
Seth Godin, considered one of the leading lights in marketing today, wrote in "Meatball Sundae," published in 2007:
"New marketing doesn't understand top down command-and-control thinking. It's actually caveman marketing, the sort of marketing that existed before money and corporations took over."
Sea Change
Many marketers believe that corporate mass marketing is dying.
"We're watching it die," says Godin in "Meatball Sundae."
The disintegration of mass marketing was occurring before the Internet, says Godin, as a greater variety of products became available and markets became fragmented. But the Internet has accelerated the trend and added new dimensions to it, enabling geographically dispersed communities of interest to find one another and congregate online, and enabling new modes of businesses to serve them.
In the old era of mass marketing, explains Godin, companies set up factories in which they mass produced items and mass marketed them using tried-and true formulas via the mass media modes they helped create - TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, direct mail, catalogs, and billboards. These forms of media all involved one-way transmission to a mass audience.
Corporations were able to exercise control over consumers through the limited number of products, channels, and stores, and through control of the one-way media. As Godin says, "The key drivers in old advertising were a scarcity of choice and a large resource of cheap attention."
David Ogilvy in 1983, ten years before the Internet began its rise, asserted that increasing cost and market fragmentation were causing mass market advertising to decline. In "Ogilvy on Advertising" he wrote that we had reached "the end of the block-buster brand," explaining that:
"It has become prohibitively expensive to launch brands aimed at a dominant share-of-market. Even manufacturers with the biggest war-chests are finding it more profitable to aim their new brands at narrowly defined segments of the market. The recent launch of a new cigarette cost $100,000,000. The advent of cable television, with 50 or more channels, will make it easier to aim your advertising at special groups of consumers. There may never be another universal giant like Tide or Maxwell House."
With more choices and channels, customers are no longer hostages of old marketing, argues Godin, who asserts that it is no longer easy for corporate mass marketing to foist on people inferior products, which he calls "meatballs."
Clumsy attempts are being made by corporations to gussy up their meatballs by promoting them via flashy Web 2.0 media, which Godin likens to putting sundae topping on the meatballs. "The very advantages our organizations are built on are fading," says Godin, "and no amount of flash is going to sell these meatballs."
The consumer, says Godin, has the power to say, "If I'm not interested in what you have to say, I won't watch it."
Similarly, Locke argues that his agenda has been "to show that marketing as currently practiced is badly mismatched to the culture of the Internet."
Not Dead Yet
Not all observers believe that mass marketing is dead.
"The predicted demise of mass marketing is somewhat premature," said marketing guru Philip Kotler in "Kotler on Marketing" in 1999. Kotler argued that that mass marketing still could be used effectively, pointing to its success in emerging markets like the former Soviet Union. "Such companies as McDonald's, Nike, and proctor & Gamble are rushing in with their mass-produced products and are attracting numerous consumers eager to buy their well-known brands," said Kotler.
Similarly, Jean-Marie Dru in "Disruption" described how, in France, initial resistance to McDonald's was overcome through effective mass advertising that resulted in the number of McDonald's restaurants increasing from 20 to 500, and still rising.
Ross Dawson, described as "an expert on the future of media and technology trends who is chairman of the global events and consulting firm Future Exploration Network, CEO of the consulting firm Advanced Human Technologies, and writer of the blog Trends in the Living Networks," sees mass media and micro-media blending. Says Dawson:
"Mass media will not die - what we are seeing emerge is a continuous spectrum from traditional mass media through to small community-based conversations. For any particular client or campaign, PR professionals will have to consider where across this spectrum of media they should be investing energy to achieve results."
Indeed, a look at our culture today shows that mass advertisement continues to be used effectively to promote soda, beer, vodka, fast food, cereal, soup, candy, snacks, cars, airlines, computers, soap, shampoo, detergent, drugs, perfume, clothing, razor blades, department stores, insurance, and other goods and services.
Whether mass media is dead, alive, or diminished, there is no disputing that a multitude of communities have manifested themselves online, and that if marketers wish to reach these communities, they must do so through new and non-traditional methods.
While giving mass marketing its due, Kotler in 1999, recognized that "Today's markets are fracturing into smaller collections of minimarkets." Kotler noted that, "The Digital Revolution has fundamentally altered our concepts of space, time, and mass."
In response to the new digital marketplace, he foresaw that the practice of marketing would undergo the revolutionary changes we are seeing today. "In the coming decade marketing will be reengineered from A to Z," said Kotler, explaining that engaging customers would become part of the equation:
"Marketers will need to rethink fundamentally the process by which they identify, communicate, and deliver customer value. They will need to improve their skills in managing individual customers and allies. They will need to involve their customers in the act of codesigning their desired products."
From Mass Media to Micromedia
In "Gonzo Marketing," published in 2001, Locke describes how the new market is composed of an increasing number of small sites, or microsites. People are congregating, he says, not in "the huge aggregations demanded by traditional media-cum-marketing expectations, but in pockets, in ecological niches too small to attract the notice of the Eisners and the Murdochs."
And what the members of these new communities are attracted to, he says, are people who are knowledgeable and provide insights of value. "Websites that have genuine voice are where people are beginning to congregate online" as opposed to "ad-infested portals," says Locke. What these people like is not advertising, he says."It's voice."
These pockets, or microsites, Locke explains, comprise an important aggregate of micromedia, as opposed to mass media. Together their influence and buying power are having a profound effect on the marketplace.
"As Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated in The Tipping Point, little things can have disproportionately large consequences," Locke noted. Ultimately, says Locke, "An entirely new class of micromarkets - small, but growing fast - are forming around such micromedia sites today."
The Long Tail of the New Marketplace
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, picks up on the idea of micromarkets and elaborates on it in "The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More," published in 2006.
Describing "The New Marketplace," Anderson argues that the mainstream "is shattering into a zillion different cultural shards," and that this fragmentation is reflected in the entertainment industry and our culture in general. We are no longer a culture dominated solely by big stars and smash hits, he says, rather a constellation of larger and smaller stars and hits within a variety of communities.
"The simple picture of the few hits that mattered and the everything else that didn't is now becoming a confusing mosaic of a million mini-markets and micro-stars," says Anderson. "Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches."
While there remains a viable but shrinking mass market, there is a growing collection of micro-markets that in its aggregate is large and lucrative. "The one big growth area is the Web," says Anderson, "but it is an uncategorizable sea of destinations, each defying in its own way the conventional logic of media and marketing."
When you portray all of these small markets on a graph, the result is a long flat line that resembles a "long tale." Rather than a homogenous mass market, this market is comprised of numerous niches, categories, and subcategories.
The result is that more varieties of products and services are being made available to serve these micro-markets, including millions more movies, songs, books, and games. "Our world," says Anderson, " is being transformed by the Internet and the near limitless choice that it provides to the consumers; tomorrow's markets belong to those who can take advantage of this."
Sean Ellis describes how this trend affects the software industry, enabling customers to find specific solutions tailored for their needs vs. one-size-fits-all solutions. Says Ellis:
"In software, buyers no longer want mega-products that can do everything. If they have a problem, they Google for a solution and download a couple free trials of 'perfect fit solutions.' Research indicates that this is the case for buyers ranging from an individual consumer up to a large enterprise buyer….A good software strategy in a long tail world suggests breaking mega products into many micro products and finding all opportunities to market these micro products to active seekers."
New Modes, New Models
"What happens when people don't respond to the old messages anymore?...What happens when marketing changes and suddenly the rules are different?" asks Seth Godin in "Meatball Sundae."
Explaining how businesses can make the radical adaptations necessary to succeed in the new marketplace, Godin advises, "Here's the sea change. You have the chance to go from finding customers for your products (the meatball way) to a new way-finding products for your customers."
"New Marketing is exciting but it seems to work best for those who start from scratch, who build their foundation around the idea of their marketing," says Godin. "If your assets are synchronized with what you can do with New Marketing, you win."
Old marketing, says Godin, "is the act of interrupting masses of people with ads about average products." New marketing, he says, leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests." In the new realm, "Marketers treat every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media."
Marketers, Godin says, do this by telling stories. "We tell stories people want to hear and believe," says Godin. "We spread ideas."
Voices and Conversations
In "The Cluetrain Manifesto," published in 1999, Locke and his co-authors asserted that "markets are conversations" and outlined the new market reality the Internet was creating by enabling people to have "human to human" conversations vs. the one-way stream of traditional marketing. The Internet, they argued, was enabling a new twist on the old concept of the marketplace in which people in olden times had gathered to discuss products, prices, and reputations in face-to-face encounters.
In this new marketplace, companies must change the way they speak to customers. "Authentic, engaged voice is precisely what companies desperately need today," says Locke. "Lacking that, they're sunk."
Similarly, says Godin, "In a transparent world, people avoid the deceitful. The New Marketing doesn't demand better marketing. It demands better products, better services."
The need for companies to engage in meaningful conversations is what marketing and PR practitioners everywhere are preaching, while promising to help companies facilitate these conversations.
For example, Edelman on its Web site writes:
"We build relationships for our clients with multiple stakeholders through dialogue, credible sources of information and relevant experiences...We engage micro-media-bloggers and online conversationalists-who appoint themselves leaders of a category and passionately communicate their real understanding of it."
Likewise, says Burson-Marsteller: " Digital conversations are happening right now about your business and your brand. Are you part of the conversation?"
Burson-Marsteller promises to help clients navigate "the overnight social networking phenomenon " and that its teams "understand how to package stories to reach the target audiences our clients need to engage in order to achieve their business objectives."
Similarly, marketing firm Crayon describes itself as "a strategic consultancy that helps its clients achieve positive change and impact by joining the conversation." Says Crayon:
"As a consortium of new marketing futurists, social media insiders and conversational marketing thought leaders, we help companies not only make sense of this change but actually evolve the way they engage consumers, prosumers and influencers."
Just Let Go
The advice that marketing gurus are giving to CEOs and CIOs is to give up the top-down, command-and-control modes of operating, and to listen to and engage with customers and employees.
Says Tim Walker in "Social media: Control without command" on the Hoover's Business Insight Zone:
"What's required on the part of companies is to let go of the fantasy of command: You will not 'command' the airwaves. You will not 'command' the conversations around your offerings in the marketplace. Also, you will not 'command' your employees, who can access all sorts of scary hiring-market information via LinkedIn and Jobster and Monster and Craigslist and the rest."
Giving up command-and-control is wisdom being propagated and peddled by marketing gurus everywhere. For example, Envision Solutions offers an E-book seminar aimed at the healthcare industry entitled "From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage: A New Healthcare Communications Strategy For A Social Media World."
Lois Kelly, partner in Beeline Labs, describes a talk she gave to a roomful of CEOs from all industries - including executives of Disney, Motorola, and AT&T - in which she told them:
"CEOs have a command and control mindset, but there is no control in our talk world. Customers control our brands and how they want to engage with us and talk about our products and services. This CEO mindset is in the way of how customers want to get to know their companies."
The goal, says Lois, "is helping people make sense of information through conversations. The more meaningful the conversations, the faster people are able to connect to your organization, product or service."
Not letting go, Lois warns the CEOs, can have dangerous consequences:
"Not embracing conversational marketing and letting go of some control is reckless because it puts a barrier up between you and your customers."
Antony Mayfield on the Open Minds blog describes how John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, has let go and is reaping real rewards . Says Mayfield:
"Mr. Chambers has been tearing down command and control as a way of doing things at Cisco. Why? Because 'command and control is dead,' as will the companies that cling to it over the next five to ten years, he says."
Among the major social media innovations Chambers introduced was an internal system of "global councils," an expanded network of Cisco executives that replaced the previous smaller operating committee. By expanding participation and decision making, he is able to address new multi-billion-dollar market opportunities faster and more effectively, says Chambers.
These councils, Mayfield explains, "can tackle any business need or challenge and sketch out an outline approach within a couple of days and have a business plan in place in a couple of weeks." Instead of bringing ten top leaders to bear on problems in the company, he is able draw on 50 to 500 leaders. The previous operating committee could only tackle two or three issues a year, said Chambers, adding that "I have 26 Global Council Networks at the moment, and I think it may be too few."
Chambers found that incenting leaders to cooperate cross-functionally across the company broke own barriers and resulted in successes that were not possible previously. "Behaviors changed very quickly once incentives were altered," says Mayfield.
While letting go was difficult for Chambers, Mayfield explains, empowering his people has paid off and taught him a lesson. "This was an effort of will for John personally," says Mayfield. "He had to sit on his hands and learn how not to be directive, among other things. But very quickly, Chambers says, he found that his people were "making better decisions than I could have."
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