Gonzo Marketing

I've just finished reading Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke. It's a great stimulus/challenge. (That's the good part, and a very good part). I can't help feeling that the suggested way forward at the end of the book (underwriting interest group web sites) is a little like 'just one more marketing trick' in itself, and in the long run may suffer from the same cynical reponses from customers/users/etc as all the traditional modes of marketing/advertising/using-the-internet-as-broadcast. But maybe that's not a bad thing - its another idea which should be explored. I also feel that this is aimed at the big guys. How do small businesses do this? (I'm not saying there is no answer, only that I need to think hard about how it might be done).

To me, Gonzo Marketing (the book) emphasises the idea that the Internet is a Public Park, a Common, a Community - so we should go with that idea. Traditional use of the Internet for business (... can I really say that about something that's only a few years old? Perhaps I just mean typical usage today) is as a Shopping Mall; a Private, Pay-To-Get-In Park, owned by the big end of town. Maybe it is both - say like a city, which has public and private places. I like the corner store, the local library, the local council market days, but I still shop in the Mall, in the supermarket, and I go to Angus and Robertson's (Barnes & Noble equivalent in Australia) to buy a book.

Still thinking. Perhaps I'll re-read Cluetrain, and checkout the "small pieces" work-in-progress!

Things haven't changed

"Large nations do what they wish, while small nations accept what they must." - Thucydides

Still got the day job though ...

We are proud to announce the birth of our very own shopping site. My colleague, Bruce Prior, of Lower west Centennial Park, in Sydney (Redfern for those in the know), wrote all the code in java, and I tarted it up in the HTML presentation. We did it for our friends Mark and Tim Brickel, who run a store in Clifton Hill, Melbourne, selling Victorian and Edwardian restoration materials. Try it - we'll like it! Its called Pickwick House, and you can get it here

Did Dubya watch the Harry Potter movie?

There is a line in the Harry Potter movie, where Harry is told (by the evil one of course) "there is no good or evil, there is only power". Alas, I think this is so true in the real world too. Another way of expressing the same sentiment, I think, is the expression "Might is right".

Whoever is the most powerful, gets to say what is "justified", what is "morally" right. There is no distinction it seems, in practice, between an explanation for an action, and the moral justification for an action. Osama bin Laden apparantly believes it is morally right to kill thousands of innocent people in his cause to right the wrongs which he perceives to be so. George W Bush believes that he, in turn, is morally justified to bomb Afghanistan, killing 100's if not 1000's of innocent people in order to bring bin Laden to justice - that is, kill him. So many people I talk to happily accept Bush's argument, and are even outraged that I think differently. That line of thought says that the end justifies the means.

I find the view understandable, but I can't see how it is morally justified - unless I accept that "there is no good or evil, only power".

Management Bollocks

Quote from "The Little Book of Management Bollocks" by Alistair Beaton (published by Pocket Books)

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the Darkness he called Management. And God said, Let there be best value performance indicators, that all the beasts of the field may compete in a global marketplace. And Lo, the earth brought forth beasts of the field and creeping things, which were promoted unto senior management positions and given dominion over all mankind. And on the Seventh Day, God rested, and said unto himself, 'I wonder if I should have outsourced this to someone who knew what they were doing?'