Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices (Hardcover)

by Christopher Locke (Author) "MARKET RESEARCH IS DEAD..." (more)
Key Phrases: gonzo model, new micromarkets, gonzo marketing, The New York Times, Della Femina, Time Warner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The coauthor of the no-more-business-as-usual blockbuster The Cluetrain Manifesto--which basically told Net-age marketers to stop talking at their markets and start conversing with them--follows up with a book that's more a highly entertaining, nimbly erudite screed against our current mass-market, mass-media culture than it is a recipe book for e-commerce marketing success in the post-cyberboom era. Writing in a paler imitation of the profanely irreverent, freely associative "gonzo" journalism style pioneered by his obvious idol Hunter S. Thompson, Locke starts with the by-now-familiar idea that old-style mass-marketing "broadcast" advertising just won't work on the Web. Indeed, he says, conventional print-ad tactics as embodied online by banners and pop-ups might actually generate more ill will than sales, and that's why companies must use the Web to somehow enjoin their products and services to the quirky niche interests of the gazillion individual cybercommunities (or "micromarkets") whose greatest advantage for marketers is how freely and speedily their members talk among themselves, touting a brand when and if it's truly deserved.

Useful examples of such enjoinment don't appear until a slim, penultimate chapter, and they are mostly theoretical in nature, e.g., what if Ford, after giving its employees worldwide free home computers and Net access (which it did), got all of them who were into organic gardening to infiltrate organic-gardening Web communities to push (via the subtle art of persuasion, one supposes) the niftiness of Ford pickups for organic gardeners? Truth be told, Locke seems more like a social critic or humanist at heart than a marketing consultant, and his essential disdain for corporations (which are anti-human, he declares, despite all their philanthropic tootle) leaves the reader wondering whether he really wants e-commerce to effectively pervade the Web's truly democratic, populist microcommunities for its own purposes. As his wonderfully cranky cult Web zine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, and his alter ego therein, RageBoy, have proven, the man's a smart, witty, broadly read cyberpundit. In Gonzo Marketing, he tweaks everyone from Disney, Time Warner AOL, and IBM to fellow biz-book writers like Seth Godin (Permission Marketing), and if you read it first for its own eclectic, acerbic delights and second for a postboom e-marketing primer, you'll be rightly pleased. --Timothy Murphy

From Publishers Weekly
This latest offering from the coauthor of last year's The Cluetrain Manifesto puts a new spin on the age-old approach to marketing, which says businesses need to establish common ground with potential customers before they begin to try to sell anything. "At its heart, gonzo is animated by an attitude of deeply principled anti-professionalism in the best sense," says Locke, who purports to offer a new business template and a futuristic view of the marketplace. Although this work suffers from frequent dead-end tangents, hopeless self-indulgence and endless references to Locke's last book and his former coauthors, it does have a few shining moments. His theories are intriguing; in Locke's world, for example, employees of Ford Motor Co. who like organic gardening would be given space on the Ford Web site to communicate with other organic gardeners, thus reaching people who eventually could become Ford's customers, thanks to their online relationship with the gardening Ford employee. To his credit, Locke's nine maxims ("best practices usually aren't"; "storytelling is the path" to marketing success, etc.) do make sense, and his avoidance of Internet advertising and embrace of community involvement are refreshing. (Nov.)Forecast: Perseus will have to do a little gonzo marketing of its own to help this title break out of the saturated new business category.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (October 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738204080
• ISBN-13: 978-0738204086
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,349,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It never happened to me, and I don't think it'll work., May 3, 2002

By	Hiroo Yamagata (Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been a fan of Chris Locke/RageBoy for quite a while. His attacks on Internet marketing gurus, those stupid know-it-alls on e-whatever, has been great, and had me rolling on the tatami (I'm in Japan).

This book sums up his criticism, and tries to come up with a remedy of his own, which he calls gonzo marketing. But, I'm very sad to say that his arguments doesn't hold water.

What he proposes is a very zen kind of thing; if you want to sell products on the Net, then you should not think of selling it (because if you think about it, people will sense that you are a sales person, and would despise you). Just be as you are. If you are active online without ever mentioning your product, then someone would notice that you work for such and such company, and people will come to you. Do not seek sales, and the sales would seek you out.

Based on this theory, he proposes that firms should allow employees to enjoy net surfing and engage in news group discussions on payed time. They won't be forced to make any sales or do any sales pitch. Just be sincere, and then, when people encounter some problems with a certain product, it might pop into their minds; "hey, that guy works for this company! Maybe he can help me!" And then you'll have a lead!

Now, this sounds nice (as an employee myself). Hey, I can waste time on the web all day and get paid! But if you have been active on the Net, you should step back and think. For example, I've been so-so active on the net, participating in Linux and other user groups and discussions. In Japan, I'm a pretty famous online presence. Now, has anyone contacted me about my professional business (I'm a consultant in the road and power sector)? Has anyone inquired me about the projects and services of my firm?

Not once.

Let's think the other way around. Has it ever occurred to me of asking my online friend Mr. W, who works at NTT (the Japanese telecom giant) to give me advice on the selection of my calling plans? Never.

If my experience is of any indication, I must conclude that the Locke/Rageboy's Gonzo Marketing proposition is false. It does not happen.

The fact is, I really don't want this sort of thing to happen. I want my online presense to be a private thing. And I don't want to deal with someone with some hidden (or explicit) corporate agenda on his/her mind. Even if you are NOT explicitly required to make any sales pitch, a sales lead IS desirable than not having one, and that motivates people to make subconscious distortions to make subtle sales pitches. He says that there can be an iron wall between the content and the sale department. We all know how well THAT works.

His logic is often screwy. He tries to fool the readers by mixing 2 claims: that the broadcast model is dead everywhere, and the broadcast model is dead on the Internet. He claims that there is no mass market on the Net, so in order to get the market share, they have to go for the numerous micromarkets through gonzo marketing. But when he talks about market shares, is he talking about market shares in general, or just the market shares on the Net? Maybe, it just means that firms should forget about net marketing altogether, and focus on TV. How important is the net market anyway?

His over reliance on mushy sentimental rethoric is often annoying. Also, he never shows us that the gonzo marketing model actually works. All he mentions is that he wrote funny clever zines which the readers loved (or some big shot praised). Did it really lead to any sales for the sponsor companies? He never tells. In one rare occasion, he notes that Harry Potter series have elicited over 10,000 reader reviews, and he says that the worth of these reviews (which represents a conversation within a micromarket) is apparent by the fact that Harry Potter part5 is already the #1 best seller. But... that's not entirely due to the reviews, is it? That's not any proof.

And Amazon encouraging reader reviews is vastly different from GM infiltrating an organic gardening site in the hopes that some one may mention something about cars (that's the gonzo proposition). A bookstore wanting people to talk about books is understandable. A GM sleeper lurking at an organic gardening site...that really creeps me out. And I don't think that's sincere or truthful. Maybe she IS really interested in organic gardening, but still, people would feel awkward talking about cars there. It won't be the same. And before you know it, you'll have to start suspecting everyone.

The book has its good moments. The Internet being a market in the old sense, a place for conversation and interaction, is nice and interesting (as it was in "Cluetrain".) But as a whole, I can't really see his ideas flying. It was great while he was ranting. But when he tried to compose it into some rational theory that makes sense, well... it doesn't make any sense. And trying to make sense sort of spoiled the irrational crazy energetic fun part that made it gonzo.

I'm giving the book 3 stars, because it is a good read on what's wrong with Internet marketing today. His proposals are, well, a good try, better than most other books that I've read, but falls way to short to actually work, IMHO.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweep Away the Cobwebs & See What's Behind Them, December 19, 2001

By	Jack Reed (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews

I disagree with the recent review that thinks this subject only deserves an "article" instead of a book. The reviewer seems to think that because Locke does not provide a nice neat little well annotated map of the future of the Net as it relates to business and marketing that he hasn't done a service worthy of "book" status.

Just because you recognize that something is wrong doesn't mean you know precisely what right is. We all know that the torrent of spam that we are daily assailed with is the wrong way to market on the Web (how many of you have really bought anything that was so advertised). But while Gonzo Marketing does not spell out the precise ABCs of what is developing in this New World, he does a very exemplary job of talking about it's roots and realities. I think perhaps the most important single word that is used in both Gonzo Marketing (and The Cluetrain Manifesto) is "voice". The Net and it's derivitive, the Web, are forums for the individual voice to speak quietly but to a huge audience. It is this voice, this individual human communication that matters, because while we'll all trash a spam email within milliseconds, most of us will responed to a truly individual message from another human being. This takes the market back to what is originally was before it was usurped by corporations to mean masses of blank faces, and present it as the simple aggregation of people who wish to have discourse about their daily needs and perhaps exchange a few items for a few other items. Never mind that we're not really a bartering economy anymore, the character of that ancient market place is still deeply embedded in our psyches and most of us feel comfortable on that more personal basis. Locke even points out that Amazon is participating in his view of the current Net market by the very fact that it lets it's buyers review the books they purchase and thereby pass on to others a personal account of the value of the product.

So I say that you should buy the book if you are prepared to think for yourselves and project what Locke says onto whatever micro world you live and make money in. There simply are no books that can tell you extactly how to do it, although many claim to, but this book reminds you of lots of truths that you may have let slip into the sub-conscious realm, and once you have brought them back into view it is quite possible that you can apply Gonzo principles to whatever it is that you do with your life.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ..., February 3, 2002

By A Customer

...He offers some interesting ideas, but unfortunately I doubt that any of his examples would result in positive ROI for any of the companies involved.

True to its title (a reference to the eccentric writing style of writer Hunter S. Thompson), "Gonzo Marketing" also wanders and leaves along the way to its business advice. Alas, the odd writing style (sometimes quite readable, sometimes not) failed to entertain or educate me, and it certainly did not convince me that the author's proposals were worthwhile.

The recurring central theme of Gonzo Marketing is that companies should try to connect with customers by having employees or agents participate in communities that include the company's customers. "Companies don't give a damn about advertising . . . . What they care about is connecting with potential customers by whatever means is most effective." (p. 186)

Locke suggests that a company like Ford and Dell empower its employees to participate (on company time) in online communitites which include potential customers. For example, Dell could encourage its employees who believe in home schooling, to participate in online communities about home-schooling, not writing sales pitches about Dell, but instead being visible as helpful community members who happen to identify themselves as Dell employees. Locke also suggests that Ford employees who like gardening could participate in related online communities, and perhaps other participants in the community will decide they like Ford and buy Ford trucks.

This is not a new idea. Local business owners have long been involved in their local communities, by sponsoring Little League teams, by encouraging staff to join the local bowling league as a team, by donating supplies to the local Habitat to Humanity project -- and quite simply, by being actual members in the local community who share the interests and goals of many other members of that local community. People like to do business with people they like.

Alas, Locke's examples all seem to fail, not because they are "wrong" but because they all appear to fail the ROI (return-on-investment) test required of all intelligent marketing. They also create huge risks of brand dilution and potential legal liability.

Another of Locke's ideas is to "tell a story" or create a fun, playful message that can be associated with your company or product. Thus, 'marketing' becomes more engaging, more interesting, and more accepted by consumers -- but alas, when marketing is so entertaining that it is accepted, it often is no longer marketing.

Oddly, the real message I drew from "Gonzo Marketing" is that companies can do interesting, different styles of marketing, as long as they focus on being "useful" or helpful to the audience they are addressing. It's not enough to be "relevant" or "entertaining" -- those are good, but good marketers must go further: be useful, be helpful -- be someone that your audience "knows, likes, and trusts." That last phrase is not from Gonzo Marketing -- it is one of my standard marketing mantras...

Gonzo Marketing is not a dreadful book; I read it through, and I enjoyed parts. But I think the book could have been much better if a capable editor had carved its 214 pages down to about 80.