The Dreams of the Apatosaurs

Tom Hespos has just written an imediaconnection column on the difference between word-of-mouth marketing and "conversational" marketing (which is in my opinion just a recasting of Seth Godin's "permission marketing," but the zeitgeist is clear). His point is well-taken: "conversations" with your customers do not occur when you hire people who pretend to be fans of your crappy product or service and send them out on the streets.

Days like these, on the eve of a major site redesign initiative, I find myself thinking (more) about the relationship of good to great--and of suck to schweeet. Something's got to give, I keep thinking. It's not that you need to take it to the users--that's been done. And even the dinosaurs are aware in their dim little brains that the users are talking, and a fair number of them are even hearing those users--some are even listening, sort of, as the mire blurps and gurgles around them and a half-ton of proto-peat ferments in their bellies. Listening, dear reader, as you might have heard the sparrows arguing in the eaves this morning, as a distant commotion on the edges of slow, swampy dreams.

The problem is that it's time to wake up. Whyever should you listen to birds in the morning? Because they are a sign that you're still here and that the world has managed one more time to assemble itself around you out of chaos and old night. In short, they remind you of meaning, which is life. Does listening to customers create meaning? Well, if it doesn't create meaning for you, you need to be doing something else.