It’s true that it is not pointing to a clear hazard, a mechanism and a goal.
But it is a handbook to what happened over the next 20 years.
Think carefully about how some challenger businesses went into established markets, and how successful they were because they followed these ideas.
Southwest airlines. Robinhood. Airbnb.
Think about how they talk to customers vs the old guard. Think about how YouTube adverts typically work vs TV adverts.
Then think about some recent conflict between people and “corporate”: Twitter, Reddit, GameStop.
Reread the manifesto with these examples in mind.
You might say “so what? It just seems kind of obvious”, but it’s hard to remember, in 1999 this was radical - some people said nonsense - thinking.
If you were starting a new consumer business, you’d need a marketing agency and an ad agency and you’d have to buy full pages or TV spots to get going and it was ruinous.
What cluetrain predicted is all that was going to get way, way, way easier.
And here we are. Search and social ads you can target in minutes, YouTube ads you can film on your phone, and social media accounts where you can have conversations human to human.
Go look at the Netflix social media strategy and tell me is that more cluetrain, or more the old school?
It might not have the specificity you want, but it still somehow ended up being completely accurate and useful to those who could take action with it.
It’s true that it is not pointing to a clear hazard, a mechanism and a goal.
But it is a handbook to what happened over the next 20 years.
Think carefully about how some challenger businesses went into established markets, and how successful they were because they followed these ideas.
Southwest airlines. Robinhood. Airbnb.
Think about how they talk to customers vs the old guard. Think about how YouTube adverts typically work vs TV adverts.
Then think about some recent conflict between people and “corporate”: Twitter, Reddit, GameStop.
Reread the manifesto with these examples in mind.
You might say “so what? It just seems kind of obvious”, but it’s hard to remember, in 1999 this was radical - some people said nonsense - thinking.
If you were starting a new consumer business, you’d need a marketing agency and an ad agency and you’d have to buy full pages or TV spots to get going and it was ruinous.
What cluetrain predicted is all that was going to get way, way, way easier.
And here we are. Search and social ads you can target in minutes, YouTube ads you can film on your phone, and social media accounts where you can have conversations human to human.
Go look at the Netflix social media strategy and tell me is that more cluetrain, or more the old school?
It might not have the specificity you want, but it still somehow ended up being completely accurate and useful to those who could take action with it.