Conversations are not markets, people!

Ten years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto claimed, in the first of its 95 Theses, that “markets are conversations”. Unfortunately, this has led marketers to continue to believe that the reverse is also true — that all conversations are markets.

Or, more precisely, marketers believe that all places where humans gather to converse are places where they can and should take their marketing message.

Some marketers, anyway.

The marketers I want to slap.

This isn’t helped by some later theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Unless you read these next two very carefully…

38. Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the market.

… you could end up believing that all human discourse is nothing but a market! That in turn leads to the “marketing everywhere” idea.

This. Belief. Is. Wrong.

Continue reading “Conversations are not markets, people!”