Cluetrain Original

Cluetrain has New Clues – time for newbies to read the original!

Estimated reading time: 3 min

I listened to the FIR podcast #790 and found that Cluetrain has been updated!

Cluetrain Original

Cluetrain Original

New Clues published in January and numbers 52-67 apply to our marketing communications world in particular. [see below]
Oh, and also pay attention to number 100
You want to know what to buy? The business that makes an object of desire is now the worst source of information about it. The best source is all of us.
It will be hard to adhere to them – because marketers are busy fouling their own nest, much as we did with banner adverts, SEO and oh-so-many other internet tools which we over-exploited so the makers ended up changing the rules to exclude our actions.
Seems to me ever more of a message about the quality of content, ease of discovery and honesty of presentation.

Your marketing strategy for 2015

If your marketing strategy for this year even remotely resembles what you did for the past 5 years tear it up.  Forget it.  The businesses who will thrive understand Cluetrain, they present their wares at least in part in a Cluetrain-format and will reap the $$ rewards accordingly.
Just call us if you think you want to change and don’t know how.

Rant over.

Now, what do you think?
I’m going to get my whole team to read Cluetrain original next week as their homework!

New Clues for Marketers

The New Clues that directly relate to the practice of marketing. Numbered from the original.

Marketing still makes it harder to talk.

52  We were right the first time: Markets are conversations.

53  A conversation isn’t your business tugging at our sleeve to shill a product we don’t want to hear about.

54  If we want to know the truth about your products, we’ll find out from one another.

55   We understand that these conversations are incredibly valuable to you. Too bad. They’re ours.

56  You’re welcome to join our conversation, but only if you tell us who you work for, and if you can speak for yourself and as yourself.

57 Every time you call us “consumers” we feel like cows looking up the word “meat.”

58  Quit fracking our lives to extract data that’s none of your business and that your machines misinterpret.

59  Don’t worry: we’ll tell you when we’re in the market for something. In our own way. Not yours. Trust us: this will be good for you.

60Ads that sound human but come from your marketing department’s irritable bowels, stain the fabric of the Web.

61  When personalizing something is creepy, it’s a pretty good indication that you don’t understand what it means to be a person.

62  Personal is human. Personalized isn’t.

63  The more machines sound human, the more they slide down into the uncanny valley where everything is a creep show.

64  Also: Please stop dressing up ads as news in the hope we’ll miss the little disclaimer hanging off their underwear.

Je suis Charlie. [obvious placement!]

65  When you place a “native ad,” you’re eroding not just your own trustworthiness, but the trustworthiness of this entire new way of being with one another.

66  And, by the way, how about calling “native ads” by any of their real names: “product placement,” “advertorial,” or “fake fucking news”?

67  Advertisers got along without being creepy for generations. They can get along without being creepy on the Net, too.

 

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