The 5 P's of "Activist Marketing"

Uberbuzzguru, Pete Blackshaw wrote a pretty good piece in ClickZ on Activist Marketing, where he outlined the 5 P's of what he calls Activist Marketing (I would file under Communal Marketing), incorporating and encompassing Consumer Generated Media (splitting hairs, but I refer to as Consumer Generated Content - Media is such an ugly word)

After polling numeous input and opinion from the industry, he synthesized the responses into a very convenient 5 P framework:

Pure. There's an unmistakable purity to the activists' cause. We all know the ugly side of it, the extremism. But the softer side of purity drives trust, credibility, and believability. Marketers, in contrast, are chock-full of disclaimers. There's always an exception or something in fine print. We proclaim we're transparent, but we're not. We list ingredients in hard-to-find places, hide the contact form, place asterisks on the tough issues, and "borrow equity" from others to make our big points.

Not so with activists. We may not agree with them. We may even have reason to despise them. But we always know where they stand, whether they're antiabortion crusaders, antiglobalization rabble-rousers, or "take no hostage" PETA members.

Passionate. Passion sells. It sells because it's usually genuine. Last January, I heard über-blogmeister Robert Scoble say the two core drivers of the blogging revolution are passion and authority. Jackie Huba of Creating Customer Evangelists said, "Activist marketers are often terrific at getting passionate believers to spread the word and recruit new believers." Consumer-generated media (CGM) is such a big deal today because average consumers wrap technology-fortified passion and authority around their experiences.

Prophetic. What I truly admired about the divestment activists is they really believed the university would divest. Effective activists stick to their vision and help others to see it and believe in it. We often can barely seeing beyond the next ROI analysis, and we still can't articulate a post-TV vision.

Poor. No question, when cash is short our minds work harder and faster. Street-smart instincts fire up. Activists have no choice but to be flexible, creative, agile, iterative, and highly experimental. Much as I love to curse my company's board for slashing my marketing budget after the dot-com crash, I've definitely been more resourceful and creative with my precious dollars. You can't starve a marketing budget in perpetuity, but belt tightening does force creativity.

Paranoid. I don't mean this pejoratively (after all, high-tech god Andrew Grove dedicated a book to this word). But let's face it, activists have an "us versus them" mentality, often for good reason. I know this firsthand. Every day, I wake up paranoid some large advertising or research behemoth will steal all the great CGM frameworks and concepts I've created over the years. Paranoia keeps me on guard, fiercely competitive, and five steps ahead.