Let’s Not Dumb Down Open Source Marketing

I smiled a couple of months ago when James Cherkoff got the marketing and PR blogosphere buzzing with his “manifesto” on open source marketing released on ChangeThis.

I grinned when I saw that he started a company around the concept.

I shrugged my shoulders when I learned the manifesto was translated into Dutch and Taiwanese.

I applauded when I read Darren Barefoot’s post.

I scratched my head when I saw it referred to as a “whole new theory” and “an outstanding essay.”

I swallowed hard when I read falling-all-over-it praise from many pretty seasoned and widely read blogging professionals who position themselves as “new communicators in the know” and old hands steeped in this “Internet stuff.”

But I gritted my teeth and took to my keyboard when I read in a marketing blog the statement that open source marketing was a concept conceived by Mr. Cherkoff.

Some of us have been around long enough to know this term comes to us from Chris Locke,, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. A quick search on Google will net you some truly thoughtful, deep – and prophetic - pieces on open source marketing, early ones dating back to 1999, by some people who really know what open source marketing [is] should be because they are the ones who started the conversation and who have since been developing both scholarly and practical thought leadership on its meaning to evolving organizations.

Back in June of 2000, our web site described our company this way: “a unique communications company built around a concept called ‘open source marketing’ which encompasses client, customer, markets and conversation.” In that same year, we produced a video webcast discussing the concept and how it was shifting the terra firma of organizational structure and marketing. Much of which is both scary and exhilarating to review again.

I am honestly delighted Mr. Cherkoff has stimulated the conversation into a wider circle, and I look forward to its evolution. However, I’m afraid I more than agree with Darren Barefoot’s post. The “What is Open Source Marketing?” manifesto is neither original nor thoughtful, and it in fact leans on shallow examples that do not exemplify open source marketing, but are mere marketing manipulations. Mr. Cherkoff defends his manifesto by saying he is introducing these “new market” concepts to marketers who would never go near the likes of books such as The Cluetrain Manifesto, We the Media, or The Cathedral and the Bazaar. First, somebody fire those marketers; and second, maybe we are better off than having them thinking this is open source marketing.

The hallmarks of anything “open source” are organic, self-organizing, and containing a value chain. Such systems are all center and no edges, and all edges and no center, meaning it is impossible to point to an apex of control – no one or no thing is in control. Open source marketing moves companies towards, as Geoffrey Moore so beautifully states, “designing themselves into the very fabric and standards” of markets. Who is accomplishing this? Apple, Nokia, eBay. Starbucks.

Having said all this, we learn by doing, and Mr. Cherkoff has put himself out there, and is stimulating the conversation and inviting the discussion. I sincerely applaud him for that. But, let’s not try to dumb down open source marketing for marketers and communicators who don’t take responsibility for learning and thinking and shaping their practice.