The Big Blog Company builds on the philosophy of the Cluetrain Manifesto, whose authors have urged companies to regard markets as conversations. The central message is that far from aiding such exchanges between companies and customers, formulaic corporate PR is an obstruction to the process in an era in which sophisticated, internet-savvy and information-rich customers regard slick marketing-speak as something to be filtered out.
The Cluetrain authors point out that the internet has restored the original conversational dynamic of the marketplace, where individuals exchange information in their authentic voices. They herald the end of “business-as-usual,” describing how the internet has changed information asymmetries forever. “Business-as-usual” is characterised as top-down control of employees by a de-personalized corporation and a barrier erected between customers and its employees, who are the natural communicators of the company’s authentic voice. In the traditional model, marketing and public relations are one-way channels through which customers are bombarded with messages. Top-down, cookie cutter, de-personalised marketing has become an annoying barrier to communication, the opposite of a conduit to valuable customer relationships.
Companies that do not join the conversation will soon have no customers to talk to. The internet enables customers to talk about the company amongst themselves, by-passing corporate messages, if they wish to. Allowing employees, the true repository of the company’s value, to join these conversations and communicate directly with customers enhances the company’s credibility and increases its presence in the marketplace.
Weblogs offer a way for companies to reclaim a place in the marketplace conversations using their employees’ credible voices. Blogging helps the company to build a community around it and provide an informal focus for customer loyalty. Blogging is individualistic, customised, and scalable. It originated in individual conversations and is a ground-up, grassroots phenomenon. Technology is changing the modern corporation.
We are at the end of the command and control business world. We are at the beginning of the coordinate and cultivate business world. We are experiencing:
- Movement toward human freedom in business that may be as fundamental as democracy was in government 200 years ago
- Lower transaction costs and globalisation that combine to create enormously efficient and dynamic markets
- Large corporations allowing 100% of the workforce to represent them in the marketplace (eg Sun Microsystems allowing any employee to blog on the company’s site)
- Globalisation and technology trends that, taken to their logical conclusion, mean that eventually corporations will trump nations
- Large online sites that can be described as communities with an individual mayor heading up each one (eg eBay is the community of 40 million people and Meg Whitman is the mayor)
We can build you a really nice blog, but more importantly, teach you how to use it and how to let the world know about it. And maybe invite you to our great parties.
