Edgy Blog Alert on Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Life in NYC

In the spirit of the [non]billable hour's blog Friday Five (I recommend you don't just read folks in your own industry; I've gotten great tips applicable to any professional service firm), I have two blogs you might want to check out and may or may not be familiar with...second one follows in another post.

Hugh McLeod at www.gapingvoid.com is edgy and funny if you aren't easily offended that is (and I don't need to agree with all of it to gain value) he has some great thought-provoking concepts that are worth contemplating...

This week he out-did himself and wrote the Hughtrain Manifesto.

9. Regular readers will have heard me mention The Cluetrain Manifesto: "All markets are conversations."

OK, I'll up the ante.

The Hughtrain Manifesto: "All products are conversations."

Then in another post yesterday:

"...Media is not 'entertainment' or 'information'. Media is an interface. Interface implies action. I leave Buzzmachine more switched on than when I entered. So for me, there's an actual kinetic quality about visiting here [i.e. Buzzmachine].

A brand is a place, not a thing.

I tried to resist writing my own manifesto-length response to the Hughtrain Manifesto.

On point #1, authenticity is more fundamental than transparency.

Transparency is a given with the amplified word-of-mouth and information access available today largely due to the Internet. There are things a participant in the market/product "conversation" may or may not be able to factually prove or disprove even in a "transparent" world. However, a human kinetically or emotionally or viscerally senses that a message is somehow "off". The dissonance between the stated message and my internal meter's response will be jarring. So, in the end, appropriating Zen (or Kabbalah or Sufism or whatever) for the sake of being trendy comes across transparently salesy to my internal B.S. meter.

Result: Remember the last cocktail party you were at. Here's some clod trying to feed you a line. You are dying to duck away (discreetly or not) to find someone more engaging. You really prefer to be drawn into, pulled in, seduced into a conversation...not forcefully dragged in. The 'conversation' with the clod - it was over before it started.