Experimenting at the Fringes of Marketing

I partly wrote the Open Letter to the Lunatic Fringe of Marketing because I was amazed with all the attention on Lovemarks when something is happening that is a true lunatic fringe, er innovative, experiment in marketing is nearly completely ignored. (Another experiment besides the fabulous idea of a fully transparent blog book, that is. And SpreadFirefox.com of course.)

I started writing this post over the weekend and since then the buzz has picked up in the blogosphere around the New York Times story, The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders, about BzzAgent. Excellent. Let's hash that out as it has more implications to the leading edge of marketing than Lovemarks does. (BTW, Slashdot has the right idea: it's still closer to open source advertising than open source marketing).

There were some interesting things peeking between the lines of the NYT piece though, here's just one:

Recently the company has also begun working with clients to begin converting existing loyal customers into private, well-organized, word-of-mouth missionaries.

But I don't want to dwelve into BzzAgents or the excellent customer evangelists revamps right now. What am I talking about? No clue yet? It's related to this...

This is something we feel strongly about in our investments.  We'd much rather see entrepreneurs build something quickly, get it out there, and let the customers bang on it and evolve it.  The entrepreneurs who insist on over engineering their solutions inevitably end up with nothing to show for it. - Fred Wilson, venture capitalist blogger

And this: According to the PDMA, four of five products entering development fail. And 42% of launched products fail. Marcom is hustling what are usually the wrong products and touting the wrong features in the marketplace. Shoving your message down customer's throats isn't necessary when you've hit their sweet spot.

And this:

Intel has stumbled. The stock price has declined 25% this year. The company has cancelled a succession of high-profile projects...

As long as the game was about faster chips, Intel was preeminent. The corporate culture was dedicated to very smart people making very fast chips... When technology-centric, the corporation can turn in on itself. But when consumer-centric, the corporation must open up to who the consumer is, what the consumer needs and how the technology will be used. In the language of the Intel motto, it’s no longer “all inside.”...

But, finally, there is a challenge for Intel here. To be consumer centric, they must add new rules of discovery. - Highly recommend reading full post, It's All Outside, at Cultureby

And this:

I think BzzAgents is a "crap" idea simply because it doesn't solve the client's fundemental problem i.e. nobody sincerely wants to talk about their product. - Hugh Macleod

Still no idea? Jason Calacanis writes in an email (via Marc Canter's blog):

I talk to advertisers all day long and they thrilled with blogs and  embracing the idea of companies talking directly to their customers. It's making marketing and PR *more* effective. In fact, people are spending MORE money and hiring MORE people in order to deal with the increased pace of marketing!!!

Yes, advertisers are often more taken with the idea of it than actually engaging in any dialogue with a live customer in their own environment. Explain how an ad is a dialogue, please. Am I missing something? It's the product developers and product managers that would be thrilled to talk to customers the most - the fuzzy front end folks.

Marqui blogger The Head Lemur responds to Calacanis:

This appears to be a bit of an oxymoron. If advertisers are so thrilled and embracing the idea of companies talking directly to their customers, why are they not stepping out of the way?

Exactly. The Marqui bloggers program is certainly not perfect (well, for starters, they haven't accepted me - yet, perhaps - into their bloggers program) but it's a step in the right direction of having folks - hmm, they say the next-gen of analysts - bang away on their product and provide real feedback - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Marqui's VP of Marketing, Janet Johnson, says:

We like the ideas of focus groups, advisors, analysts, and developers being exposed to our solution. We’re a small company, and don’t have a lot of money to spend on every activity we would like. We also like the idea of bloggers talking about their particular interests in the world.

Believe it or not, we have a company value (a bit unspoken) of making the world a better place – through our products, actions and words. Much like we’d pay an analyst to get them to cover our products (good or bad) we believe we have an opportunity to have the next-generation of analysts (good for us, and good for you!) paid for covering our products. We have trust in the transparency of our relationships with the bloggers we pay. And the integrity (a certified company value) to stick with them, contractually.

And yes. We get PR. It’s either going to be a spectacular success, or an amazing failure. Either way, it’s a huge social experiment. And we hope other companies will join us in the experiment.

I encourage other marketing bloggers to jump onto any experiment they can get their hands on and provide feedback not just on the product, but the entire program and the full process itself. And even better create your own experiments.

I just joined as a BzzAgent myself to participate in Tom Peter's recent campaign (it's not like I don't already read Tom and plenty o' biz books) and get first-hand knowledge of all pros and cons of this particular WoM program for myself. I hate the connotations of the word duty, but just bear with me: yes, it's our duty [or insert-better-word] as the lunatic fringers and trend translators to bang away on marketing and evolve it and then translate the value for others.

Update: Of course, as I get ready to go to "press" (er, hit Publish button), Marc emails and says I'm in for the second round of Marqui bloggers in March. If you are a marketing/advertising blogger, contact Marqui at bloggers at marqui dot com to participate.

Comments

[/pd]

Excellent Fello BzzAgent !! :)-

Interesting taperstry of thoughts !! I'm begin takin your feeds now !!

/pd

[Rubin]

"If you are a marketing/advertising blogger" - I don't understand why they would want to participate. I have linked one in my profile now that only talks about advertising, why would they want to participate in the Marqui thing? It's not like that is advertising news (to post Marqui things every day) so it would ruin said blog.