The Cluetrain Manifesto

Turning Marketing Back into a Conversation

Markets are nothing more or less than conversations among human beings with human voices. Voices come naturally and sound natural. People who hear a voice can recognize that the speaker is a human being. By contrast, mass marketing is not a conversation - it is an address. The Internet restores the element of human conversation to marketing. This fact has several consequences:

• "Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies," so conversations join people in new ways.
• People use the Internet to get information from each other instead of from vendors.
• Companies can and must communicate conversationally with their markets.
• Positioning means taking a position, reflecting values the market cares about.
• The Internet allows customers to find new suppliers instantaneously.
• To develop loyal customers, companies must join the customers’ communities.
• Employees also use the Internet to communicate.
• As a result, corporations (and unions) can no longer control information.
• A healthy Intranet makes it possible for workers to organize in new ways.

Companies that fail to grasp...