Stop Listening to the Customer

chapter 8 gonzo marketing 1: fire the CEO

Brands pride themselves on ‘integrated marketing communications', which means all communications are linked. Marry this with the idea that ‘everything communicates', absolutely everything, and the entire business should ideally be oriented around the same brand idea. The central brand idea should become the North Star and drive the look, feel and meaning of everything. This includes the website design, the swing tag, the UX and CX, the advertising and even the branding on salespeople's cars. Brands are at their best when everyone in the organisation is aligned around a single idea. This is known as ‘inside out' marketing.

Gonzo marketing

For me, the most useful articulation of inside out marketing is from the first marketing book I read. The book was called Gonzo Marketing: Winning through worst practices by Christopher Locke and was recommended to me by a friend in advertising. No-one I know has ever read it, but it's the inspiration for this and the next chapter.

Gonzo marketing is adapted from the ethos of gonzo journalism, the most famous proponent of which was Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is held up as the quintessence of the genre. Gonzo journalism collapses boundaries between the reader, the content and the author. There's no claim of objectivity because the author is part of the story. As Wikipedia describes, ‘It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author ...