Gonzo Marketing : Winning Through Worst Practices

by Christopher Locke

• ISBN13: 9781841121666
• ISBN10: 1841121665
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Capstone Ltd

Summary

Gonzo Marketing is a knuckle-whitening ride to the place where social criticism, biting satire, and serious commerce meet... and where the outdated ideals of mass marketing and broadcast media are being left in the dust. As master of ceremonies at the wake for traditional one-size-fits-all marketing, Chris Locke has assembled a unique guest list, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Hunter S. Thompson, to guide us through the revolution that is rocking business today, as people connect on the Web to form powerful micromarkets. These networked communities, based on candour, trust, passion, and a general disdain for anything that smacks of corporate smugness, reflect much deeper trends in our culture, which Locke illuminates with his characteristic wit.

Author Biography

<B>CHRIS LOCKE</B> is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, president of Entropy Web Consulting, and editor/publisher of the widely acclaimed and justly infamous webzine, Entropy gradient Reversals. He has worked for Fujitsu, Ricoh, the Japanese government's "Fifth Generation" artificial intelligence project, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, CMP Publications, Mecklermedia, MCI, and IBM. Named in a 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the "top 50 business thinkers in the world", he has written for a wide variety of business and technology publications, including F<I>orbes, The Industry Standard, Information Week, Harvard Business Review, </I>and <I>Release 1.0.</I> He lives in Boulder, Colorado. 17 02 "Ladies and Gentlemen, please return your tray tables to the fully upright and locked position, suspend your disbelief and put on you tinfoil pyramid hats. We are now entering&[cue; lights, cue music] the Brand Dimension!" <BR> from <I>Gonzo Marketing </I> <P> <I> Gonzo Marketing</I> is a knuckle-whitening ride to the place where social criticism, biting satire, and serious commerce meet and where the outdated ideals of mass marketing and broadcast media are being left in the dust. As master of ceremonies at the wake for traditional one-size-fits-all marketing, Chris Locke has assembled a unique guest list, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Hunter S. Thompson, to guide us through the revolution that is rocking business today, as people connect on the Web to form powerful micromarkets. These networked communities, based on candour, trust, passion, and a general disdain for anything that smacks of corporate smugness, reflect much deeper trends in our culture, which Locke illuminates with his characteristic wit. <P> Just as gonzo journalism rose in response to "objective" news standards that claimed to foster fairness but in practice discouraged writers from speaking their minds in their own voices, so too does gonzo marketing call fro a similar response to assumptions about consumer behaviour that no longer relate to how people actually live their lives. <P> <I> Gonzo Marketing</I> is not yet-another nostrum for hoodwinking the unwary. It's about market advocacy. It describes how "the artist formerly known as advertising" must do a 180. It's about transforming the marketing message from "we want your money" to "we share your interests". It's about tapping into, listening to, and even forming alliances with emerging on-line markets, who probably know more about your company than you do. It's a hip-hop cover of boring old best practices played backwards. The paradox is that companies that support and promote these communities can have everything they've always wanted: greater market share, customer loyalty, brand equity. <P> Irreverent, penetrating, profoundly simple, and on-the-money, <I>Gonzo Marketing</I> is the raucous wake-up call that no one interested in any aspect of twenty-first century business - from the trading floor right up to the boardroom - can afford to ignore.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: Participating in the Scene	1	(18)
Eight Miles High: The View from 40,000 Feet	19	(24)
The Value Proposition	43	(22)
Code Blue in the Marketing Ward	65	(38)
Stories as Strange Attractors	103	(26)
Social Marketing and Public Journalism	129	(36)
From Micromedia to Micromarkets	165	(18)
The Gonzo Model	183	(20)
Champions of the World	203	(12)
Notes	215	(14)
Index	229	(14)
About the Author	243