Marketing via chaos
By Thor Muller (11 points), April 16, 2007 — 3 CommentsWhen is chaos better than control? When it leads to an unfair marketing advantages. This is what “community-based marketing” is all about—it’s a bottom up approach that represents a big break from the top-down marketing strategies of the past. In the top-down method you craft and control your message, and defend it against any dilution or dissonance from the outside world. In the bottom-up approach you encourage your customers to craft their own versions of your story, interpreted for their lives and made meaningful for their conversations. This is how word-of-mouth happens: people make your story their own.
About Thor Muller
Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything." He is also the co-founder and Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm.
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(9 points)
April 16, 11:04 am
Nice idea – but it seems that pulling off this bottom-up approach is hard as at the very least it seems to need a large contributing community.
I would like to hear of examples, especially cases where ventures with limited budgets were able to market successfully with chaos.
(11 points)
April 16, 11:04 am
Actually, nowadays every company has to contend with chaos whether they like it or not. Chaos exists outside of the organization, when any blog post, forum discussion or Google search result about your company or product may have a larger net impact than any managed campaign that you produce.
The “embrace chaos” approach doesn’t mean that we should abandon all traditional marketing, nor that we should try to “build communities” per se. Rather, it suggests that all of our activities will be re-interpreted and (potentially) magnified in unpredictable ways on the Internet. Our job, if we choose to accept it, is to embrace this loss of control rather than fight it.
But it’s counter-intuitive for many, as this company showed:
http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2007/04/12/new-rule-dont-…
(0 points)
May 08, 09:05 am
Thor-
I voted to greenlight your idea, but more because I’d like to see how you follow through. I had one initial objection to your post:
Just because the environment *appears* more chaotic than in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be planned for (though I agree you can’t plan this type of Marketing using yesterday’s tactics). It’s not about a lack of order (Chaos), in my humble opinion, it’s about the shift in control (from marketer/business owner to consumer)
However, your response to Vineet’s comment leads me to believe we may agree more once you’re given the space to articulate your full thoughts. Specifically, the notion you call “chaos” existing whether organizations like it or not, is one that leads me to hope.
I’d respectfully suggest, while less sexy a title, what you’re talking about is Marketing via Transparency, not Chaos.
Either way, hope we get you the votes you need to lay out your case.