Book Review: The Cluetrain Manifesto Gives Marketing a Clue

I realized about halfway into the Cluetrain Manifesto that I had probably purchased the wrong copy of the book that my class required; the edition that I have my hands on is a 2009 10th Anniversary version, which includes roughly 70 pages of new material current through November 2008.  As such, I wanted to focus in my posting on the comments the authors provided on the updates to the book, as these updates touch on the main themes of the original publication while also providing insights more relevant to the modern web culture.

Originally published in 1999, the Cluetrain Manifesto serves as a sort of blueprint for corporate marketers to understand the new reality of the web-based world.  With 95 theses, the Manifesto serves as a great summation of many of the concepts discussed on this blog and in my course: that markets are conversations, and that businesses must adapt to become a part of this conversation or face extinction.

In that respect, I wish we'd read this book toward the beginning of the term, as I feel it provides a great overview of the concepts illuminated by the authors that have come since.  That said, there are some phenomenal nuggets of information in here, largely because the Cluetrain Manifesto - unlike most of the books we've read - focuses on marketing and corporate culture primarily, with politics and government getting secondary mention.  The corporate world is likely to be ahead of the political realm when it comes to the adoption of new techniques and strategies - after all, they have a profit motive to do so.

But in reality, what the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto really point to is a dynamic shift in the way in which we view our every day world - be it in government, the private sector, or in our own lives.  The authors discuss the Internet's fundamental ability to reopen discussions and promote interaction - and emphasize that the true point of the web is to become whatever its users determine it to be.  As such, marketers, governments, strategists - all of us that try to find ways to use the web to achieve an end are really working in an old world.  The Cluetrain Manifesto suggests that the Internet has the power to ultimately bring about the end of the old world of top-down, corporate influence over culture, and replace it with something more organic, more determined by the masses.

In the updated version, the authors admit that their original vision has not come to fruition in quite the way that they expected.  They note the rapid adoption of the web and the vast strides it has taken since 1999 - discussing blogs, comment sections, reviews on Amazon.com, and even Barack Obama's election to the presidency.  They emphasize that the Internet continues to give people real power that they did not have before, and has served to make corporations more accountable to the people they are supposed to ultimately exist for.

But at the same time, the authors point out that the web has also served to promote authority figures; to give new and old figures alike new powers over new marketplaces.  These figures - be them individuals like Oprah or mega-media companies that seek to control the web for their own purposes - possess only a limited understanding of what the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto believe the Internet can and should be.  What's worse, they manipulate this understanding in an effort to quash a lot of the development that can bring about the ultimate transformation that the original Cluetrain had foreseen.

This vision is particularly interesting - and it is fitting that "Manifesto" is the term used here, as it reminds me a bit of Marx in the loosest sense.  In essence, it seems that Cluetrain vision of the Internet is a truly level playing field, where any individual or company with savvy, an honest voice, and a willingness to engage the public can and should succeed.  Trying to move away from this vision is no less than despicable to the authors - they view the old push media messages with scorn, and abhor the thought that the old players may co-opt the Internet for their own purposes.  Manipulations of the Internet for traditional marketing purposes ultimately kill the very adaptability and openness that makes the Internet so exciting in the first place. 

I was particularly fascinated in the new version's discussion of the goal of a semantic web, in which users would ultimately determine what was provided to them by the Internet.  A notable example came in the form of a customer seeking a given product, at a given price.  In this ideal future version of the web, that customer would simply post what they need, and companies would then bid to provide it to them.  It is a fascinating idea - and one that could certainly be possible, if difficult, to achieve.

I have mixed feelings on the ultimate messages in this book - but it is one of the few in this semester that I would recommend to just about anybody.  The ideas - agree or disagree - are essential.  The book easily and succinctly sums up the new reality that the Internet demonstrates, and despite the fact that the scope of predictions offered by the 1999 version haven't yet come to fruition, the grander themes suggested are being played out each and every day in the modern world.