The Cluetrain Manifesto, Various Authors [big screen ebook reader txt] 📗

THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO

http://www.cluetrain.com

 

95 THESES

 

1. Markets are conversations.

 

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

 

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are

conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,

dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is

typically open, natural, uncontrived.

 

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this

voice.

 

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that

were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

 

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked

employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new

way.

 

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms

of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

 

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more

organized. Participation in a networked market changes people

fundamentally.

 

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far

better information and support from one another than from

vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to

commoditized products.

 

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than

companies do about their own products. And whether the news is

good or bad, they tell everyone.

 

13. What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees.

A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing

standing between the two.

 

14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new

networked conversations. To their intended online audiences,

companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

 

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of

business — the sound of mission statements and brochures —

will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the

18th century French court.

 

16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the

dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

 

17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that

used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

 

18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked

person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined

in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

 

19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If

they blow it, it could be their last chance.

 

20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At

them.

 

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less

seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

 

22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on

the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a

little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

 

23. Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a

position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market

actually cares about.

 

24. Bombastic boasts — “We are positioned to become the preeminent

provider of XYZ” — do not constitute a position.

 

25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to

the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

 

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are

deeply afraid of their markets.

 

27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant,

they build walls to keep markets at bay.

 

28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market

might see what’s really going on inside the company.

 

29. Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious

minds.”

 

30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the

breakup is inevitable — and coming fast. Because they are

networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships

with blinding speed.

 

31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked

knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own

“downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question:

“Loyalty? What’s that?”

 

32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

 

33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It

can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

 

34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns

of their communities.

 

35. But first, they must belong to a community.

 

36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures

end.

 

37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will

have no market.

 

38. Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech

about human concerns.

 

39. The community of discourse is the market.

 

40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will

die.

 

41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a

red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than

against their own market and workforce.

 

42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each

other directly inside the company — and not just about rules

and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

 

43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate

intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

 

44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR

policies and other corporate information that workers are doing

their best to ignore.

 

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are

built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct

something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate

conversation.

 

46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the

word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

 

47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily

on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge.

They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these

networked conversations.

 

48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and

legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage

sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked

marketplace.

 

49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be

fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and

detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

 

50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect

for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract

authority.

51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and

reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of

paranoia.

 

52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open

conversation kills companies.

 

53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company.

One with the market.

 

54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost

invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete

notions of command and control.

 

55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are

broken. Command and control are met with hostility by

intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in

internetworked markets.

 

56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are

speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

 

57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable

to happen sooner.

 

58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of

IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

 

59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now

online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal

fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from

intersecting.

 

60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

 

61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk

to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of

language that rings false — and often is.

 

62. Markets do not want to talk to flaks and hucksters. They want

to participate in the conversations going on behind the

corporate firewall.

 

63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to

talk to you.

 

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and

strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will

not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites

chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

 

65. We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to

talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes

written into a script.

 

66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting

our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless

annual reports and third-hand market research studies to

introduce us to each other?

 

67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You

seem to be speaking a different language.

 

68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around — in the

press, at your conferences — what’s that got to do with us?

 

69. Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing

Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.

 

70. If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a

bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t

let you talk that way.

 

71. Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We

don’t recognize ourselves in your projections — perhaps

because we know we’re already elsewhere.

 

72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are

creating it.

 

73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the

door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

 

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

 

75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it

something interesting for a change.

 

76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some

better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

 

77. You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh,

sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

 

78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

 

79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic

self-involvement, join the party.

 

80. Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s

not the only thing on your mind.

 

81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of

one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

 

82. Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it.

Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a

chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?

 

83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take

one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

 

84. We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool

online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they

come out and play?

 

85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If

you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d

be among the people we’d turn to.

 

86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are

your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than

watching the clock. That would get your name around better than

your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to

the market is Marketing’s job.