Tag Archives: Seth Godin

You can change everything

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In a recent post, Seth Godin reminds us we are not really stuck in a rut. We can, in fact, change everything and then lists a bunch of ways to do that. Some of my favorites: Move to Thiland; Become a vegan; Have all meetings in a room with no chairs, and everyone wears a bath robe over their clothes.

But as one who spends most of his days (and nights) working on websites, this one really spoke to me:

“Delete your website and start over with the simplest possible site”

Might be difficult to make this blog more simple. But some of our company websites could be a LOT leaner and cleaner. I’d love to flush ’em and start over as Seth suggests.

Are radio commercials spam?

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A little preface here: Most of the food I ever put in my mouth was paid for –directly or indirectly– by radio commercials. My father was a radio guy and for many years I wrote and produced radio “spots.” Lots and lots of them. Some were good, some were just the right length, if you know what I mean.

So when Seth Godin –one of the keynote speakers at the recent Country Radio Seminar in Nashville– refers to radio commercials as “spam,” it’s a problem for me. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Godin’s blog and have purchased and read a number of his books. I think he understands marketing in the 21st century as well as anyone.

So what’s spam and what’s not?

When you get your hands on my email address and send me an unsolicited email trying to sell me something (or get me to give you money, or visit your porn site, etc) …without my permission, we call that spam. You invaded my inbox without my permission.

When I turn on my local radio station, I know there will be commercials. They pay for the music/news/weather programs for which I tuned in. I’m giving tacit permission for the the station to try to sell me something on behalf of their advertisers. Value for value. That doesn’t sound like spam to me.

And if every commercial I heard was talking about something I cared about, something of interest… I’d probably pay more attention and the commercials would be worth more to the advertiser.

This is how cable TV programs work. If I’m watching HGTV (House & Garden), there’s a pretty good chance the commercials will at least marginally relevant.

I’m sure a lot of radios stations attempt to do this when and where they can. But it’s tough. They’re trying to reach the largest audience they can and will sell a spot to damn near anyone (preachers and politicians pay in advance).

Given the choice, most of us will choose NOT to listen to a poorly produced or irrelevant message. Commercial or otherwise.

So are are radio spots spam or not?

Only the listener can answer that. And he or she does, every time they punch the button to another station. And keeps punching it until they find a song or talk show they like (at least more than the commercial). Or pull out the iPod.

Seth talks “Tribes” at radio seminar

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J. T. Gerlt (Program Director at KTKS, Lake of the Ozarks) recently attended the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, where Seth Godin was one of the keynote speakers. From Country Aircheck:

“Best-selling author, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “agent of change” Seth Godin delivered one of the best received keynotes in seminar history. Beginning with the premise that “ideas that spread, win,” Godin detailed the changing realities for mass media. “It isn’t ‘mass’ anymore,” he warned. And he laid out a new approach. “Music isn’t in trouble,” he said. “The music business is. The good news is, there’s a huge number of opportunities.” Those can only be met, however, by those willing to commit to innovation. “Timid trapeze artists are dead trapeze artists,” he joked.

The business model, Godin explained, is shifting to the point where the radio business will look a lot more like the magazine business. Fragmentation of mass media, in Godin’s view, means building strong and self-perpetuating communities he calls tribes. “More isn’t the point,” he said. “Tighter is the point.” The “television industrial complex” is being replaced by the “fashion/permission complex.” He suggested that stations will know they’re reaching their tribe with the crucial “anticipated, personal and relevant” messages when they get complaints from listeners when it isn’t sent out. Getting there means a break from the pattern of demanding success before making a full commitment.”

“Demanding success before making a full commitment.” We’re not going to try something new (risky) unless we’re sure we can make a lot of money doing it. Man, that sounds familiar.

“You’re not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.”

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Seth Godin explains (by the numbers) how to send a personal email. My three favorites from his list:

  • Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.
  • Don’t mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
  • Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don’t have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don’t write.

Do I have the balls to forward Seth’s list to those who violate these simple rules? No, probably not.

Seth Godin on radio’s future

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Mark Ramsey has posted audio (and partial transcript) of an interview with marketing maven Seth Godin, on the future of radio. This is an update to an earlier interview. These three nuggets sloshed out of my pan:

“So if you’re an advertiser and you have a choice between reaching a ton of people who couldn’t care less, and so you have to talk really fast, yell, and make obscene promises on the radio to get them to show up at your dealership, or reach a smaller group of people about something that they’re very interested in a very connected way, in the long run advertisers are going to come back to the smaller, more tightly knit group.”

“Everything radio has done has been about leveraging a rare piece of spectrum, and the thing we have to acknowledge is that spectrum isn’t rare anymore. So the one asset you built your whole organization on is going away really fast and instead of putting your head in the sand and complaining about that, take advantage of the momentum so that when it does finally disappear, you have something else.”

“Consider the FCC’s ruling recently about the white space spectrum. What white space spectrum is going to mean is that in five years every car sold is going to have an infinite number of radio stations on it. Not 100 or 1,000 but more radio stations than you could listen to in your lifetime, and if that’s true, tell me again why you’re going to win?”

As I ponder these points, I’m listening to the very eclectic music mix on the Coffee Zone iPod. On the way to work, I’ll be live streaming Pandora from the iPhone.

Online future of journalism?

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Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:

  1. Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.  
  2. Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
  3. The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
  4. Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
  5. Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
  6. Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
  7. The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
  8. Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
  9. Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
  10. Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.

She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"

I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.

Seth: What do do about Detroit

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“What we don’t need are giant companies with limited choice, confused priorities, private jets and a bully’s attitude.

I’d spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car company turnkey. Make it easy to get all the safety and regulatory approvals… as easy to start a car company as it is to start a web company. Use the bankruptcy to wipe out the hated, legacy marketing portion of the industry: the dealers.

We’d end up with a rational number of “car stores” in every city that sold lots of brands. We’d have super cheap cars and super efficient cars and super weird cars. There’d be an orgy of innovation, and from that, a whole new energy and approach would evolve. Betcha.” Full post

This makes sense to me. So many of our institutions are broken or outdated or corrupt. But the people running them are too invested to ever change. So –painful as it will be– maybe it’s good a lot of stuff is crashing. We won’t get better government or financial markets or car companies until the old ones are gone.

The Tribal Fez

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Seth Godin defines a "tribe" as: "a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate."

One my favorite tribes is The Order of the Fez. A short bus full men who like to wear fezzes. We communicate via blog and email. The notion of a "leader" is somewhat antithetical to fezorocity (our defining Force), but since I maintain the blog I perform that role as needed. More of a recording secretary.

This weekend two of our members sent a music video that nicely captures what the OOTF is about.

Tribes by Seth Godin

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Picture_1I’ve read most of Seth Godin’s books and I’m a daily reader of his blog. But his latest book, Tribes, really spoke to me. When I read, I highlight or underline, make notes in the margins and, in recent years, post my favorite parts here.

I struggled to find one pull that captures the idea behind Tribes and decided on this one. Lots more after the jump. Continue reading →

Seth: Be careful who you work for

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“The single most important marketing decision most people make is also the one we spend precious little time on: where you work.

Think about this for a second. Your boss and your job determine not only what you do all day, but what you learn and who you interact with. Where you work is what you market.

If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that’s really picky about who you align with.”

Seth Godin is the only blogger I quote so frequently I had to create a category for those posts. The nuggets above are from a longer post I encourage you to read.

I’ve only worked for two companies in my adult life and they’ve both been great. And if that’s important in good times, it’s true in spades in tough times.