Open Source Marketing: Don’t Believe the Hype

Cross-posted to (one of) my day-job blog.

I’ve written about ChangeThis
on several
occasions. I’ve described it as a manual to being a better human, and have
found their manifestos to be thoughtful and original statements of philosophy
on a wide variety of subjects. Sadly, James Cherkoff’s What
is Open Source Marketing? is neither.

I expect a manifesto not only to be (to borrow from the dictionary) "a
public written declaration of principles", but also to be full of innovative
thinking. If we look at famous manifestos in history, this is generally the
case. Looking at other examples on the ChangeThis site (most notably The
One Minute Website), I’ve come to expect originality. You’re better off
reading a handful of documents which he liberally borrows from to reach his
conclusions: [more]

• The Cluetrain Manifesto
  (which he cites)
• The
  Cathedral and the Bazaar
• We the Media
• The
  Death of Branding

As far as I can tell, there’s not a single original notion in this essay. Now,
there’s nothing wrong with repeating or synthesizing what others have said (assuming
you acknowledge your sources), but those articles shouldn’t become ChangeThis
manifestos. The site’s editors ought to hold their material to a higher standard.

My other worry concerns Cherkoff’s misuse of the term "open source marketing".
I’m not opposed to the broadening of the term "open source" to apply
to other fields than software development–its adoption speaks to the power
of the concept. However, Cherkoff refers to scenarios which bear little relation
to the spirit or definition of "open source". For example, Cherkoff
writes:

Last year, General Electric ran an online advertising campaign called "Pen",
which allowed people to create a drawing online and send it to a friend. Effectively,
the campaign direction and content was handed over to an Open Source community.
This incredibly simple idea was a multi-award winner and resulted in users
from 140 countries e-mailing 6 million sketches to 1.5 million recipients.

That’s not open source marketing–that’s a website gimmick. They’re as old
as Geocities. Here’s another instance that Cherkoff cites:

Redbull’s Art of the Can campaign challenges consumers to turn the product
packaging into inspiring works of art, all to be judged by Tracy Emin. They
have set a few rules and then asked their customers to come up with the ideas.

Back in the day, we called that a ‘contest’. He also makes references to advertisements
being parroted or satired by consumers. That’s flattering to the company, but
only open source in the most shallow and accidental sense. Most of the examples
that Cherkoff cites are trivial notions of customer interactivity, not representative
of an earth-shattering shifts in the consumer-company relationship. Yes, consumers
are more informed, yes, they’re capable of talking back, but that doesn’t, by
default, make marketing open source.

Cherkoff misses the best example of open source marketing that I’ve seen: buzz
marketing. Here, a
marketing agency farms out the work of promoting a product (undoubtedly
the ‘development’ of marketing) to thousands of volunteers. These volunteers
work individually to sell the product (often using creative methods) to their
friends, family and acquaintances. It’s odd, certainly, and not entirely open
source, but it’s in the ballpark.

What
is Open Source Marketing? doesn’t cut it. It’s central theses is flawed
and under-argued, and it’s free of original thought. I expect better from ChangeThis.