Gonzo Marketing

Having once spent a very entertaining afternoon with Chris Locke (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) some years ago, I have been waiting for a blogging moment to point you in the direction of his much-overlooked follow up book Gonzo Marketing. It seems to me that many of the ideas that he put forward back then are percolating to the surface once again.

While this thoughtful post by John Sviokla highlights the benefit of internal blogs - the more anarchic Mr. Locke suggested that employees be encouraged to set up open-access message boards (today they would be blogs) in order to interact with their company's potential customers in an unregulated way. I thought it was a great idea five years ago and Hugh MacLeod's porous membrane post last year reminded me of that. I don't understand why more companies aren't doing more than paying blogging lip-service to it. Well, I do, but they're still wrong.