If you look very closely you may notice more than a little tension between the ideas of conversation and calculation. Conversation is engaged, transparent, bi-directional, and seeks to maximize benefit for the consumer. (The debate over that word can be held for another time.) Calculation is predatory, hidden, one-sided, and seeks to maximize results for the business.

So is this all about faking genuine two-way dialogs, closely monitoring each exchange and tuning it each time through, until we can casually reach our pre-defined outcome? Is this online dating or online marketing?

The secret behind most conversational marketing is that it’s still marketing, and as Doc Searls says in a fascinating post this week:

As a verb market is not merely about selling. It is about convincing. Its ideal is control. This may not be what enlightened marketers want the verb to mean, but marketing comes from the sell side, not the buy side. Thus in practice has become a tool of control by the industrial machine. Yes, some good people in marketing actually do talk to customers, actually do advocate them. But this is still the exception, not the rule.

In the world of WOM (word of mouth marketing) and the still growing cult-of-the-Cluetrain-ers (of which I’m a proud member) authenticity is a principal tenet, but the fact that the conversation is ultimately a means to an end is left largely unresolved.

As a marketer in this world I’m listening, which is new. I’m interacting respectfully, which is a change. I’m earning trust and references. I’m opening up all kinds of new ways and times and paths for communication. We call all of this conversation. But I’m also measuring, testing, and increasingly making only the high probability bets. We call that calculations.

Is there a way to resolve the idealism of conversation with the cynicism of calculations? I think that in his post Doc challenges us to envision and create a future that squares this circle. Where people aren’t just invited to talk about how we can mutually achieve the company’s goals, but the company is instead invited to discuss how we can provide for the persons’ needs.

It’s a huge idea and one I’m probably not doing justice here. It’s also about 100 posts down the line from where I was in this chain of thought. But Doc went and wrote something that I’m willing to bet marketers will be talking about (en masse) seven or ten years for now. So I thought I’d mention it.