Welcome back from the strange 4^th of July holiday week. I don’t know about you, but I’m still confused about what day it is.

As mentioned last week, I am writing reviews/summaries of three "must-read" business books–starting last week with "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Although different in their approaches, each book debunks lot of sacred cows about business and marketing. This week is "The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual" by Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger. Next week will be "The End of Marketing as We Know It" by Sergio Zyman (the Coke marketing guru). Please send me names of your favorite business/marketing books, and I’ll include others in the future.

"The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual" by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger is a smack-you-up-side-the-head book that makes no apologies for its point-of-view. My debunkers are quite mild compared to this book. Like the other two books being reviewed, The Cluetrain is intelligent, well written, and thought provoking--and a valuable addition to anyone’s business library.

The Cluetrain is a manifesto (a public declaration declaring itself to have public importance). It starts with 95 theses, the first being "markets are conversations." Huh? you say. What does that mean? Why is that relevant to my company? Sounds a little "out-there," a little touchy feely, not very business-like. Hasn’t the Internet gotten pounded lately? Especially in the B2B or retail commerce worlds, the Web hasn’t been all cracked up to be what everyone expected, has it?

Well, maybe it is–if you want to get a clue or two. And no, The Cluetrain theses have not lost relevance after the Tech meltdown–in fact, they are even more germane today.

The book’s elevator pitch is, "People talk to each other. In open straightforward conversations. Inside and outside organizations. The inside and outside conversations are connecting. We have no choice but to participate in them."

Mostly, I found The Cluetrain brutally on the mark as it sliced and diced many of my long held assumptions about business and what the Internet is all about. I definitely agree that the Internet scares a lot of people to death because it’s not very controllable. Levine et al write, "The Internet is inherently seditious. It undermines unthinking respect for centralized authority, whether that "authority" is the neatly homogenized voice of broadcast advertising or the smarmy rhetoric of the corporate annual report."

As a manifesto, The Cluetrain is one of the most pro-business, anti-corporate books ever written. The authors make a compelling case that the huge majority of corporations just don’t get the Internet at all--they are, frankly, clueless. Corporations think that the Internet is something that they can control, put fences around, and manipulate solely for their purposes--and that their employees who are now networked together and with the outside world--and their communications--can be controlled, massaged, managed, blocked and censored. Sorry. They can’t--it’s too late. The cat is out of the bag.

The Cluetrain runs smack into the belief that corporations (and their products) are perfect and do not make mistakes (and must be legally righteous at all costs), get to control their employees and what they do and say, and are intrinsically more important than their employees. The Cluetrain dares to tread on the reality that many corporations are inhuman. Corporations are legal entities and phony "faces" of companies that often run roughshod over the people that make them up and do all of the work. Businesses, on the other hand, are essentially composed of people cooperating and communicating with other humans (not perfectly, of course) to make commerce happen.

Some corporate executives will gag on this book, but then again, the truth hurts. Most just don’t understand the Internet, and yes, it continues to frighten and confuse them. Their attitude is typical of a corporate executive whom I talked to last week. He told me offhandedly, "Yeah, we’ve got a basic site, really just to say we have one. Of course, we need to have something." Indeed, this is a smart guy running a successful small company. His company’s website is an amazingly boring, non-interactive brochure-ware site that, if anything, helps confuse the market (he certainly wouldn’t want competitors to know what he’s up to) and causes his company to sell less product than more (although he would vehemently contest that). His next big product offering, his Holy Grail, is really the company’s first "web-based" offering. That will change everything, he thinks. Maybe he’ll make that quantum leap, but first he has to understand the Internet and get a few clues. I don’t mean to pick on this executive–he’s not that unusual. Most corporations are still clueless about the Web as place to have marketplace conversations among employees, customers, prospects, and yes, even competitors. "The connectedness of the Web is transforming what’s inside and outside your business–your market and your employees……….." says The Cluetrain.

The Cluetrain argues that "networked markets are not only smart markets, but they’re also equipped to get much smarter, much faster, than business as usual………." But businesses don’t get "that the Net isn’t a conduit, a pipeline, or another television station. The Net invites your customers to talk, to laugh with each other, and to learn from each other. Connected, they reclaim their voice in the market, but this time with more reach and wider influence than before."

Most companies don’t understand that the Web is the most powerful sales medium every created. The Internet is a real place that businesses can embrace to facilitate real, imperfect conversations. In particular, it’s a wonderful place for businesses to "touch" their customers often, honestly, and openly–and in so doing let those customers tell others.

Nor do many companies get that Internet levels the playing field--not for the get-rich-quick dot.com imposters who have already shown they can’t handle it--but the folks with real product who genuinely want to join the conversation. They can lap bigger, slower, and bubble-brained companies on the Web.

They don’t understand that conversations in cyberspace via email, newsgroups, chat, etc are not about perfect grammar, being politically correct at all times, finding a new place for the old corporate brochure or old annual report, having to monitor employees even more closely, or discovering a new type of TV channel they can use to make money.

The Cluetrain first skewers, and then draws and quarters, "corporations" who aren’t getting a clue yet. The huge majority of corporations completely miss the point when they try to control market conversations versus going with the flow, loosening up, having fun, joining the party, facilitating conversations, and yes, selling their goods in a really incredible marketplace. The book provides lots of clues to help businesses embrace the Internet as a real place where conversation be more vibrant and commerce more profitable than man has ever seen. The smart ones will get on board. The others risk being torn apart from the inside by their employees and on the outside by their competitors.

The Cluetrain’s style will turn off more than a few serious (probably too-serious-for- their-own-good) business types. But for many others and me, it has struck a chord. I’m not sure that I believe the Internet is quite as close to the center of the universe as the authors intimate. The Cluetrain seems to forget sometimes that there are still other ways to communicate that aren’t likely to go away anytime soon. Sometimes the authors seem to forget that there are degrees of "being networked" and that some industries are still way behind others in the basics of networking for all of their people: decent machines, Internet connectivity, remote connectivity, etc. Healthcare, for example, which is an industry that is really all about information, is by far the most backward. The healthcare industry, which invests a fraction of what it needs to in information technology, loves to control information--not for the sake of patient privacy or other good reasons necessarily--but for the sake of the status quo. It will likely be the last bastion of information that is consciously "safeguarded" from people who buy healthcare services, but its day will come, too. People are demanding it regardless of what the AMA, AHA, and others have to say about it.

You may be a doubting Thomas even after reading this book but remember a couple things: The "word" (about your company and its products) gets out exponentially faster now–good and bad. It’s getting tougher to hide anymore. Whereas reasonable security precautions are critical for businesses, more stringent policies and procedures and mechanisms designed to control conversations inside and outside your 4 walls won’t work. It’s your choice: join the conversation or keep trying to hide behind corporate-speak online brochures, press releases, annual reports, rules and regulations, etc.

Pick up a copy of The Cluetrain online or in your favorite bookstore. Outrageous, passionate, and visionary regarding what the Internet really is and is not, The Cluetrain is a good read for everyone in your business.

NoSpin Debunkers are free weekly online newsletters written by Tom Ranseen. If at anytime you would like to be removed from the NoSpin Debunker reader list, please Unsubscribe. Otherwise, enjoy, join the conversation, and please forward this debunker to as many friends/acquaintances as you think may be interested–or send me their email addresses. Thanks.

Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157