Words Mean Things

David Meerman Scott on Web Ink Now wrote a great post yesterday about the definitions of some of these terms we bandy about like New Rules of Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Social Network Marketing.

I'm pretty much in agreement with David's definitions. One thing interesting to me are the parallels between David's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Gonzo Marketing, written by Chris Locke way back in 2001.

It is interesting to see these two very different guys present the same message in very different ways. On one hand, I think that Chris has never gotten the recognition he deserved for Gonzo. IMHO, some of what he wrote was truly groundbreaking at the time.

On the other hand. if you are trying to convince your CEO of your point of view, you would be FAR better off giving him New Rules than Gonzo. There is a lot of Chris' personality in Gonzo and you have to have suffered some kind of warpage to 'get' Chris. (I think I do 'get' Chris - I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing - and I am privileged to consider him one of my mentors.) Some of the stuff on Chris's blog would definitely not go over well in a Fortune 500 company boardroom.

David's New Rules, on the other hand, is written in a language your CEO will understand.

And don't get me wrong, that's not a slap to Chris either. Chris and I know each other well enough that I'm comfortable asking him for advice. I wish I new David that well too. I think getting advice from two such totally different perspectives would be really useful to me.

Comments

[David Meerman Scott]

Thank you for talking about my book and my blog. I have not read Gonzo Marketing, but I probably should.

It is interesting how many people have told me that they have given a copy of my book to their boss or the CEO or the people at their ad agency or PR agency. As I was writing the book, I hadn't considered that one of it's uses would be people who "get it" educating people who want to learn what new marketing is all about.

David

[Michael Goodman]

Hi Dave,
Great thoughts. Here are some back for you.

A. "Warped" people lead the world in change. "Normal" people stay happily in the middle of the pack and work on whatever seems "safe." While warped people don't necessarily get invited to coffee in the boardroom, the denizens therein live and die by the change facilitated by them. It is pretty reasonable then that the first look was a number of years ago by a warped fellow, and the safe version, cleaned up for the boardroom, happened only after it was proven effective and was then somewhat of a translation of what had come before in Ivy League terms acceptable to the Ivory Tower.
B. What makes you think you aren't "asking for advice" simply by picking up the book and reading his thinking? Simply by reading his book, you put yourself in a position of thinking through the question, "What would David do?" Of course, if relationship is a "state of being" you may be missing some bees.