It could just be strange karma that tonight the Montreal Business Book Club will be discussing And Now A Few Words From Me by Bob Garfield or serendipity. Regardless, I just read what I consider to be the best marketing article of the year.
Inside The New World Of Listenomics – How The Open Source Revolution Impacts Your Brand was written by Bob Garfield and appeared today on the Ad Age Magazine website, AdAge.com.
Garfield tears apart everything old, new and soon-to-be-hot by dismantling the core of what a brand is becoming. I’m not even going to editorialize on the content because I found the article so well written and clever that I was actually angry at myself for not writing it.
Inside The New World Of Listenomics is all about brand democratization, technology, Web 2.0 and what this means to consumers and marketers. While Garfield is known as an ad critic, he really hits home some resonating points on what works and what is terribly wrong with the marketing space.
Here’s a tease:
“Linux. Zzzzz. Wikipedia. Zzzzz. Blogging. Podcasting. RSS feeds. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. This cultish open-source stuff is undeniably a snooze – a handful of evangelistic cybergeeks yammering on till little beads of white goo form at the corners of their mouths, as you struggle to remain conscious. If you can’t get jazzed by ‘Open Source Revolution,’ fine. Maybe you prefer ‘Reverse Flow Economy,’ or ‘Listenomics.’ Whatever. Any which way, the herd will be heard. And, any which way, it is underway.
… If you can keep your eyelids propped open, you’ll have a chance here to consider the implications of TV commercials produced not by agencies, but by ordinary consumers. The stuff is out there already. More significantly, though, you’ll see how many functions of marketing research, R&D and advertising itself are being rendered obsolete by Web sites devoted to the merits, demerits and improvement of existing goods and services. At the same time, you’ll be asked to confront the double-edged sword of consumer participation.”
And that’s just one paragraph in this brilliant treatise.
Stop reading me and go get some:
Inside The New World Of Listenomics – How The Open Source Revolution Impacts Your Brands by Bob Garfield.
(Thanks Howard).