November 30, 2004

the lovemarks-cluetrain deathmatch (cont.)

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Well, it looks like I'll never get a job with Saatchi's or Apple. Heh.

Apple is no great loss. You have to remember, their schtick is over 20 years old. That mountain has already been moved. There are new mountains waiting to be moved.

As I've said before: "All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one."

And Saatchi's Lovemarks? The Lovemarks-Cluetrain Deathmatch just turned up a notch when 3 of the original Cluetrain authors recently gave their two cents:

Doc Searls:

Cool! Involuntary tatoos I might love!
Dr. Weinberger:
"Remember only the customer can decide Lovemark status"...but now that you know how it happens, go forth and Lovemark your brand. It's like "experience marketing" that teaches you the tricks for convincing people that The Olive Garden is a rustic cafe outside of Florence instead of earning their respect as a damn good restaurant on the second floor of the Youngstown Mall.
Rageboy:
On the off chance that you don't already know -- like if you've been stranded in Antarctica for the last 40 years -- Saatchi & Saatchi is an advertising agency. A big one. A hip one. Oh yeah. Why lovemarks even has a Community! Can you beat that shit? And you -- -- yes, YOU, THE EYEBALLS -- can even nominate and vote for your most beloved not-really-trademarks. Which is to say: "lovemarks." Goddam! Is this big fun or what?
[BONUS LINK:] "Lovemarks are the Clown Suit of the advertising industry."
The Clown Suit Rule.

'One of the methods used by desperate businesses in need of revenue is to place somebody in a Clown Suit outside their business in hopes of getting folks to stop in. The Clown Suit is an excellent signpost to the impending failure of the business employing them. The only exception to this rule is the Clown Suit Rental Store.'

Doc Searls had a really nice point:
I think it's all about what Garrison Keillor says at the close of every Writer's Almanac (a podcast I'd be glad to pay for, daily): Do good work and Stay in touch. That's all you really need in a connected market, frankly.
Obviously, it's easier to 'stay in touch' if you're selling an expensive piece of technology to a few hundred software companies, than if you're selling millions of tubes of toothpaste to an army of Wal-Mart shoppers. Which explains why The Cluetrain schtick is spreading faster over at Sun, Microsoft, Apple, Dell etc. than it is in the blue-collar Chicago suburbs.

But for how long?

[UPDATE:] I see the bloggers have knocked saatchikevin.com off the front page of the Google search for "Lovemarks". Heh.

Posted by hugh macleod at November 30, 2004 9:58 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Do you actually think the relationship between the Walmart army and their toothpaste company is going to change?

Also, why is it that when I go to cluetrain.com, everything on there dates to no later than 1999?

Posted by: AcouSvnt at November 30, 2004 4:59 PM

Good questions, AcouSvnt. Seriously.

My first answer: Not really. No time soon. I expect the low-end advertising market to get even more cluttered and noisy over the next 10 years.

I see people who buy into the whole Cluetrain schtick gravitating away from working for companies that make Wal-Mart-type products and towards industries that are more aligned with their whole Cluetrain-inspired belief system.

So imagine a younger person than me, just out of college, instead of trying to land a job in New York (where the big toothpaste ads are mostly written), will instead head West and try to land a job with a San Francisco agency with a few high-tech accounts. Or hell, he/she might forget advertising altogether, and just go work for some freaky startup. We've already seen that happening in spades. Expect more of the same.

Answer to second question: As far as I know, the Cluetrain folk stopped adding content to the website once the book come out in '99.

Cluetrain was not meant to be "The Conversation". Cluetrain was meant to be "The Conversation Starter."

It was them saying, "Don't look here for answers. Look elsewhere. Or better yet, find your own answers."

Posted by: hugh macleod at November 30, 2004 5:35 PM

Re: Lovemarks

The fact that an advertising agency created Lovemarks and is trying to make us believe that it has true meaning in the scheme of life is the first clue that it's suspect. It's more pompous and elitist crap meant to make them feel more important than they are and to attempt to make us believe that we cannot live without their so-called Lovemarks. It's justification that the creative is more important than substance. Frontline on PBS had a great program a couple of weeks ago called "The Persuaders" and this fits right in their sights that most of what marketers and advertising agencies do is merde and more merde.

Posted by: Alain Jourdier at November 30, 2004 7:24 PM

there was this famous guy once - jesse, or josh, or joshua or something. lived in ancient times when they went around in robes and stuff like that.

somebody told me he owned this magic spear that gave you power over all mankind. whoa! i wonder where i could buy me one of those.

confusing story though because he was supposedly one of those crackpots who go around and say "don't buy anything"...so if he never bought anything how could he own a magic spear?

anyway, i've been thinking how cool it would be if those cutlery stores in the malls that make all those decorative swords and stuff like that, if one of those places started selling the joshua brand spear of destiny™. cool...

* * *

alain,

It's justification that the creative is more important than substance.

i think it's actually a reflection of the belief that creativity and substance are not the same thing. it's a confusion between actual creativity, which is where substance comes from, and "faux" creativity, where you try to conjure some sort of gloss of creativity with a certain type of fashionable window dressing. however, i am at a lost to imagine how someone could create ball bearings, sprockets, ducts, or farings without using actual creativity to do so.

Posted by: campester at November 30, 2004 10:19 PM

For the heck of it, I registered and tried submitting a Lovemark nomination for Toys in Babeland. They don't seem to have accepted it, though, which makes me wonder if they don't accept nominations for sex toy resellers. Even really nice sex toy resellers that take the sleaze out of vibrator shopping.

How can I love Lovemarks if they want to control the conversation? A: I can't.

Posted by: James at December 1, 2004 1:51 AM