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02.08.05
What Is Open Source Marketing?
 By James Cherkoff
The love affair between big brands and mass media is over. But where do marketeers go next?
Open Source Marketing has the answers.
End of A Love Affair
Today's consumer is unrecognisable from even just twenty years ago. More savvy, more sceptical, wealthier, better informed, less deferential and generally more in control. The advertising industry, however, is still largely using tactics that were created in the 1950's, like the 30 second ad slot. The result is that consumers find advertising irrelevant, or even irritating, and are increasingly using technology like PVRs to filter it out of their lives.
That's not to say that people aren't interested in brands and products. And companies are obviously just as keen to find new customers. People just find the old-school techniques out-of-synch with their lifestyles and advertisers want to excite people about their brands, not annoy them.
All quite a conundrum for the marketing industry, a global business worth $370bn in 2004. Clearly, marketing isn't going to disappear. It existed before the TV schedule and will continue as long as markets exist. The question is where the industry can turn to next to reignite its passion and inspiration?
The answer lies in a phenomenon which demonstrates all the energy, innovation and excitement that TV brought to people in the 1950s: the Open Source Movement (OSM).
Geeksville….
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Open Source started when programmers began collaborating online to build new technical platforms and systems. Freed from institutional red-tape, hierarchy and shareholder responsibility the ideas flowed fast and furious through these online communities. The rewards weren't profit but the buzz of collaboration, the intellectual challenge and the opportunity to shake things up. At the heart of the process was the community's willingness to share programming ‘source code', albeit under certain conditions. And so the Open Source Movement was born.
By any measure, the results have been staggering. Linux, a computer operating system, was one of the first big breakthroughs. So successful that, when referring to the software giant's future, Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer said, "I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat number one".
 More recently, an Open Source community called Mozilla created Firefox, a web browser that at the time of writing had been downloaded almost 21 million times. Its members are so passionate that at the end of 2004 they funded a double-page advert in the New York Times announcing its launch.
...And Beyond
With origins like these it's not surprising that the Open Source Movement seems like a geeky, online cult far removed from the glamour of advertising and Madison Avenue. However, it's quickly moving beyond geeksville. Mainstream consumers are falling for the values that drive OSM and the super-charged, online communities that are its constituent parts.
The buzz of meeting like-minded people from all over the world: the fun of sharing ideas, however crazy or leftfield; the feelings of empowerment; the can-do, pioneering freedom. It's these social, entrepreneurial values that are driving Open Source among gamers, petrol heads, food lovers, film fans, musicians, sports junkies, globetrotters and almost every other area of modern culture. Just like TV did 50 years ago.
The non-technical examples of Open Source are varied and growing fast.
The massive file-sharing communities that gave birth to Napster and reinvigorated the music industry are based on Open Source values.
Howard Dean's presidential campaign used Open Source techniques to mobilise 600,000 people and raise more than $25m, changing the face of US politics for good.
The Creative Commons license is a new type of copyright (nicknamed copyleft) created by an Open Source community that gives artists the flexibility to collaborate. Its fans include Chuck D, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne and Gilberto Gil.
Wikipedia is an Open Source encyclopaedia (recently recognised by the Press Association) containing 1.3 million articles in eight different languages, all written, developed and maintained by regular people around the world.
Ohmynews is an Open Source Korean newspaper written by more than 40,000 individual citizens.
All massive collaborations among thousands of far-flung individuals, turned on by Open Source values.
Read the Rest of the Article.
About the Author:
James Cherkoff is an independent marketing consultant based in London.
When he isn't helping companies like GM and Nestle to get to grips
with the networked world he writes articles on the subject for online
and offline media, including the Financial Times.
www.collaboratemarketing.com |
