Gonzo Marketing ― Winning Through Worst Practices

A Harvard Business Review Top-10 Business Book of 2001Gonzo Marketing is a knuckle-whitening ride to the place where social criticism, biting satire, and serious commerce meet--and where the outdated ideals of mass marketing and broadcast media are being left in the dust. Invoking the spirit of gonzo journalism, Locke rails against business practices that treat customers like cattle, and urges marketers of all stripes to tap into Web-based communities, or "micromarkets," based on candor, trust, passion, and a general disdain for anything that smacks of corporate smugness. Gonzo Marketing shows how companies that support and promote these communities can have everything they've always wanted: greater market share, customer loyalty, and brand equity. Laced with Locke's inimitable wit and penetrating point of view, Gonzo Marketing is the raucous wake-up call that no one in business--from the trading-room floor to the boardroom--can afford to ignore.

Chris Locke is author of The Bombast Transcripts, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and editor/publisher of the Webzine Entropy Gradient Reversals. He has worked for Fujitsu, Ricoh, the Japanese government's "Fifth Generation" artificial-intelligence project, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, CMP Publications, Mecklermedia, MCI, and IBM. Named in a 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the "top 50 business thinkers in the world," he has written for a wide variety of publications, including Forbes, The Industry Standard, Information Week, Harvard Business Review, and Release 1.0. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.