Telling Stories (behind our backs)

I’ve been dissatisfied with marketing (and the outdated model of the 4Ps) for as long as I can remember. It worked fairly well in the command and control culture, where the Coca Colas of this world produced their ‘one-sight, one sound, one sell’ communications, and where readers, listeners and viewers had to put up or shut up --except, for moments such as the New Coke fiasco. Every industry probably has its own equivalent of consumer ‘rebellions’ where those at the center were caught off guard; where communicators were busy ‘telling’ and not listening, and the customers were talking behind their backs.

Blogs attracted me because they were being used by, and defined by people on the periphery. They seemed to have more interesting stories to tell, better angles, and certainly more down to earth. Unlike the ‘people at the center’ (sometimes this includes you and me when we sit at our desks!) who have mission statements to protect, hierarchies to satisfy, and editors to serve, bloggers have a direct connection to their audience. That’s what marketing has always needed –a talkback button for the customer/end user/audience/congregation/whatever. It’s no different with every profession.

If you have read The Cluetrain Manifesto, you’ll know that much of this was being written about several years before blogging came on the radar, but few could do anything about it. Blogging is certainly going to rapidly change a lot of the taken-for-granted formats and trappings of communications. That, essentially is what my topic will be on, on Wednesday July 14th, 2004.

I was (and still am) a proponent of ‘branding’ but I’ve rearranged my molecules, to borrow an expression from Tom Peters, to accommodate the hard reality that branding isn’t a secret sauce that comes in one flavor, and in one bottle locked in the corporate office vault. I was writing about this before Proctor and Gamble issued it’s own shocking manifesto of sorts about advertising this year, or McDonald’s had the guts to declare the end of mass marketing last month (and introduce the world to something that suspiciously sounded very blog-like: ‘brand journalism.’) The subtitle to my Blog, Hoi Polloi, (at http://hoipolloi.typepad.com) is “Marketing Communications, Media, and PR in a post-Cluetrain world.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not joining the ‘advertising is dead’ or ‘the end of marketing as we know it’ bandwagon. Nor do I believe that blogs are the answer to everything. A blog is a new tech tool, and tools get replaced and upgraded. New tech is often the rediscovery of older techniques. Email, instant messaging, and SMS serve one simple need: the need to invent and spread stories. Blogs seem to give this ‘gossip’ and story telling phenomenon a structure. People who have a story to tell, can now do so. The microphone is in their hands. I can see how the concept of blogging will someday be a euphemism for frank, un-hyped speech, and unmanaged conversations. I am struck by a comment made by Arthur C. Clarke, who observed that “the human race greeted the new millennium by transforming itself into one huge gossiping family.” Indeed, we are not just one huge gossiping family, but one huge connected, gossiping family.

Author: Angelo Fernando | Jul 9, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Angelo Fernando

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About: The Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is an online event that will engage PR, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe in a discussion about blogging and communications. The event is scheduled for July 12 - 16, 2004.

Links: The New PR Wiki

Recent Entries: Looking forward to 2.0; Site Statistics and Trends; A participant’s final thoughts; Traditional PR is dead - Long Live DIY PR; Quiet is the new loud

Recent Comments: Rick Barry on A Very Brief Look at Blogging for the Uninitiated Executive; George Mc Quade on The Battle Over PR; Duncan Adams on Robert Scoble interviewed on Corporate Blogging; Kevin O'Keefe on How to launch a corporate blog for a professional services organization; William Luu on Site Statistics and Trends