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August 12, 2004
Truth and Business
By QBlog in
I was reading through Chapter Three of the cluetrain manifesto (again) and just HAD to enter this email excerpt before I drifted off to sleep. The following quote is like a sidebar or pullquote in the book so it doesn't appear in the free, online version. See what you think.Any thoughts on this?There is no longer a single source for "The Truth." You can no longer download the corporate PR campaign as reality and go from there. You are now hearing many voices, many "truths," and will have to pick and choose and integrate. A company's fear is that a lone voice with an axe to grind will make up a "truth" as plausible as anything the Marketing department has come up with, but harmful to the company, and it'll be adopted as the "truth" irrespective of the facts.
The reality is that when malicious propaganda happens (and it will happen), the truth will out. That is the glorious thing about the markets of opinion; no opinion stands unchallenged. This is the real fear many corporations have of the markets of opinion, that their white propaganda — they are the Galahads of the industry, pure and good and perfect — will also not survive the challenges of the market of opinions.
They're right, they won't. Cope. The corporations will be revealed to be made up of fallible human beings. Just like us.
- Brian Hurt, e-mail to cluetrain.com
Comments
It's an excellent quotation from the book, and it's true: give enough people a chance to voice their opinion and eventually the truth will win out.
In fact, propaganda has no chance against the truth if enough people can speak their mind and voice their opinion...
Truth according to whom? And how do we vote? With our dollars or withholding of them?
Quixtar/Amway has been going for over 40 years. What's the "truth" about it? Are the products too expensive? People still buy them. Is the way people conduct business illegal? Nothing has been done about it if it is.
To say that "truth" always wins out seems a little simplistic given the complex array of factors that makes up public opinion.
And that, my Ambivalent friend, is why the "old guard" doesn't get it. They look to history and say, "Ha, we've operated as is for so many years and NOTHING'S been done, why would some 'truth' change anything?"
What they fail to understand is that within the last decade all of the old concepts about communication and the marketplace have fundamentally changed. The old method of control no longer works and those that understand that will evolve, adapt and grow. Those that don't will die an ugly and painful death.
Before the Internet (and really the wide adoption of the WWW) there was no marketplace of opinions. That "white propaganda" worked because where else were you going to go to check the veracity of the PR machine? Well, now you have a virtually limitless resource to check on the truth of that corporate PR and the little secret is that the more false it is, the more it bites the ass of those who publish it.
Anyway, you obviously don't grasp the Internet and that's fine, many don't. However, those that do will be running it in the future.
I'm not sure about all of that, QBlog.
You may be unserestimating the power of the cult mindset. Haven't people been losing money hand over fist for years in the A/QMOs? If watching his OWN money, time, and eventually friends and family, dissappear over this dumb business isn't enough to persuade the faithful IBO, I am not convinced that realizing that it is a universal phenomenon is going to change whatever is left of his mind, either.
All of which is a nice way to say "you can't fix stupid".
Absolutely. Nothing will remedy the stupid people out there. Information will just die on the vine with them.
However, you can't argue that the "truth" is now available to those who WANT to know the truth. Prior to the Web, it just didn't exist, not in any accessible format. That has changed.
QBlog,
We have addressed this before: stupid people aren’t the only ones doing it. You did it. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc…all join these scams and are unfortunately used as examples of what a good idea it is…see cults Scientology with Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Once again, problem is lots of these folks really don’t understand what they have gotten into.
Not stupidity, but ignorance. Then cult influence, mixed with pride (HOW MANY TIMES have we read “I quit and I am glad that I did but I met so many good people and it was my fault that I didn’t commit myself because even though it wasn’t right for me, I’m sure it worked…i.e. – I and people whom I admire couldn’t all be that wrong) keep people in it and defending it. To stress the cult aspect, these people, like the actors in Scientology are touted as role-models because they make lots of money (diamonds, anyone?) but it is done pretending to be something they are not. Once again for IBOs: They make their money pretending to be someone they are not.
Off this topic: someone tried to recruit me a couple of weeks ago at a fast food joint and it didn’t dawn on me until last night. He said he was a headhunter and retired military…it fits for the area…here’s my card, you never know. “International Consulting…” I just pocketed the card after giving it a glance – but made sure I kept it because it was ‘odd’ – not a real card but some cheap attempt at one. Just wasn’t right, you know? I have other interests, in the law-enforcement area, so I kept the card on a whim.
So, I check it out again last night after checking into the blog, and his website is off of BWW. Maybe I will call and ask him why he is portraying himself as a ‘headhunter,’ which is a rather slimy profession that steals professionals from one company to sell to another, instead of the virtuous lifestyle of BWW Quixtar. It is really close to saying, “No, it’s not Quixtar. It’s child pornography. Interested? Yes? OK, I’ll tell you a secret…it really is Quixtar.” Back to the ‘Mystery meeting.’
All IBOs: Why is it better to portray yourself as a known slime instead of being straight forward and say you are ‘Quixtar?’ Really, what does that say about the business? That SO MANY PEOPLE have heard SO MANY BAD THINGS about it that you have to hide it until you can determine if I am weak enough to be recruited? Be proud of that and keep calling me a loser. I have yet to ‘bend the truth’ to make a dollar. Virtue, truth and family, indeed.
Porkchop,
you're talking about Quixtar, I'm speaking of business in general. I was also never an active participant in Quixtar, my wife was. I was only an IBO by some weird Quixtar spousal rule.
Additionally, to use Scientology as an example, there is a great deal of information available about the group available today that wasn't available ten years ago. Not only that, but it's easy and cheap to get that information, compared to a decade ago.
That's the difference.
QBlog,
First off, I'd like to say that I found your blog sometime around October of 2003 when I was pondering whether I would terminate my Quixtar IBOship of 5 unproductive years. I went back and read it from the beginning and have kept up since then. I found your comments insightful, and they helped me to make the decision to quit. So for that, I thank you.
I haven't posted before because I mostly agreed with your posts and "agree" was not an interesting post.
I found this post interesting because it reminds me of the Christianity/atheism debates about what is truth.
According to the author, what is truth in the context of corporate survival? Is it public opinion? Then that's axiomatic. That's like saying what will happen will happen. If the people like it, then it will survive; if they don't, it won't. No news there.
I was criticizing the article because it seemed to imply that there was a truth that transcended this and could be ascertainable.
I don't agree that before the Internet, there was no marketplace of opinions. They may not have been as geographically dispersed, but they were always there. And just as you can only read so much on the web, you can only ask so many people about something. I also don't think that the "PR machine" was as effective as the article makes it out to be. People had critical thinking skills before the Internet as well.
The interesting thing about Quixtar/Amway is that it survives despite negative publicity from TV, cartoons, satire, radio, friends and family, etc.
I was a bit taken aback by your post.
You may be right. I may not "grasp the Internet," but you could tell that by my one short post? Are you sure you're not hanging out with those IBOs that can "know" someone from a short conversation in a grocery store check-out line and thinking that they know what that person wants and needs? :)
I hope you're wrong about your prediction that "those that [grasp the Internet] will be running it in the future." In this age of controversy of the conglomerates owning the TV, print and radio media, the beauty of the internet is that people can voice their opinions with a low barrier to entry.
Your blog is/was a much more persuasive tool when you weren't the arbiter of "truth" but the seeker of it, and you weren't so sure who the "stupid" people were.
Good luck in your journey.
Ambivalent,
Thanks for reading my blog for so long. That means a lot to me.
The truth is that when you enable masses of people to exchange ideas, facts and opinions quickly, cheaply and efficiently then you've created a powerful form of communication. The Internet does all this and more. And now businesses must decide how to deal with this new power. Should they embrace it and join the "market of opinions" or should they ignore it and continue doing business as usual?
You're right, there was a "market of opinions" prior to the Net but it was disjointed and wasn't networked. Because it wasn't connected, it lacked power and effectiveness. In the realm of information and communication, businesses really only had to contend with Media and even that was limited.
And now the paradigm has shifted. Instead of one "Truth" there are many "truths." Or, substitute "voices" for "truth." The point is that the Internet has shifted the balance of power out of the hands of the few into the hands of the many. Businesses that understand this and try to engage the many, on a peer level, will succeed. Businesses that do not, will fail.
Yes, there are exceptions, I speak in generalities. The point is that "the truth will out" in a market of opinion.
Guess whos back in circulation?????
I AM LOL!!!!! Yes QBLog I am using up this space in your blog to get the word out that I will servicing my blog, hopefully more regularly again.....feel free to stop by, I know I will be here frequently
http://www.quixtaropinionblog.blogspot.com/
Posted by: NSAIBO | August 12, 2004 11:41 PM