Seth Godin is described as an Agent of Change and an Entrepreneur and he is the first keynote speaker at SES, Chicago, Day 2. He’s just come out with a new book called Meatball Sundae and I’m uber excited to hear him speak. His newest book is all about marketing being out of sync.
The conference description of this presentation notes that a “meatball sundae is a monstrosity, the unfortunate combination of the old and the new that leads to pretty much nothing at all. By understanding the key drivers of the new marketing, you can embrace what works and abandon the legacies that are holding you back.”
Huh? Well, I’m hoping Seth will explain it and I have no doubt he will in his most unique way.
Already we have had the obligatory “what happens at SES, stay at SES” mantra note. Kevin Riley introduces Seth to the group gathered in the International Ballroom. Lots of accolades for Seth, and understandably well deserved as he has changed the face of marketing.
Seth takes the stage and he starts by noting that something big is happening and it’s going to big, and it starts with the obsession with the internet. The revolution needs some architects for the change that is happening.
Seth describes the meatball sundae. Yay! Please explain. Meatballs are commodities, made in volume for mass distribution. The sundae is the new marketing such as Facebook, etc. It works great until you put it on top of the meatballs. If you want to reach the masses, make something the masses want to buy. He says most of us work for companies/ clients that make average stuff for average people. These companies grew up in a certain place with a certain business, but something has happened since their inception.
The Yellow Pages have a multi billion dollar business doesn’t understand why people weren’t going online and he goes on to reference TV Guide versus YouTube and AOL vs. AOL Yellow Book.
Now for the history lesson, the industrial revolution happened several hundred years ago. No plates, silverware, etc. Every business only had one or two employees. Josiah Wedgewood invented marketing as we know it. He built the very first factory (he was a potter) full of people with specialties. He hired people he could train; he had health insurance. A real revolutionary. He spent 2 million dollars to ship on approval sets of China to the heads of Europe by mail. He opened the very first showroom in London.
He walked around the factory and whacked things with his walking stick that he found unsatisfactory. He figured out you could transport things by boat. He looked at everything that everyone else saw and figured out he could build something else on top of it. It’s a pyramid, with manufacturing at the bottom and sales and marketing at the top. How can we figure out what just happened can affect what we are trying to do?
We generally ask: how can we make sales and marketing work for us? But Wedgewood took another approach. The revolution of Wedgewood was that he worked from the bottom. He worked on the meatballs.
The internet is too powerful for us to think we can change it and bend it to our will. Wal-Mart’s MySpace knockoff didn’t work (it’s whipped cream on top of their meatballs). No idea that happened, but hey I learn something new everyday.
Now onto the cherries, whipped cream, and toppings: Seth’s stand on SEO is that SEO clients are lazy and want to make shortcuts too soon. They are calling us up and saying “hit me with the cherries.” Seth talks about Squidoo and how they are embracing the We and using it to their advantage. How can we change the bottom of the pyramid to eradicate being stuck.
There are fourteen (!?!) trends to describe the dynamics of the meatball sundae.
- Direct communication between producers and consumers. Seth describes the Sonos… they reach out and say “users, talk to us.” They have helpful people in their tech department who will be able to talk through any issue. They’re doomed to failure because
- Consumers are louder than ever before leading to amplified word of mouth. Nothing stays in Vegas.
- Authentic stories. There’s no time to read the fine print… They grab the stories that are authentic, consistent, and make us feel good about what we are hearing. Consumers who pay attention to every brand will never get a clear picture. Generally it’s a caricature that is not your true image. We have to go to the client and say the way this is going to be successful is not by tweaking the color map, but telling a story people want to hear. Now, we have to live it and make it true.
- Speed. FedEx, Amazon and similar companies are pioneering this, but the Web taught people that you never have to wait for anything. Seth tells a story about buying stickers. He submitted a price quote and heard back in less than 2 hours. They were too late…. Someone else showed up an hour and half earlier and won the business. Companies are not organized around speed.
- The Long Tail. What’s happening now is that companies don’t have to offer just a few, but every possible option for consumers. Options win all the time.
- Outsourcing. If your job can be reduced to a manual, sooner or later you will be out of a job. Go to Jott.com, sign up for free, call in and say something, and your reminder will be sent to your inbox. Amazon offers this service. Say the title of the book and it’s at your house tomorrow. Woah. Huge time saver here! The little factory can outsource and win.
- Splitting. The idea that you can control what people can see when you want them to is bogus. Google changed all that. No one takes just the good parts, bundles are the way to make things work. Google unlocked the bundle.
- Infinite channels of communication. A whole slide of companies appears, none of which existed 11 years ago. Another slide of a ridiculous amount of cold medication choices. Your clients make the blue box that people don’t know they need. We have branded everything to death. Another image of “diet water.” Oh, snap. With the amount of clutter on the Web makes things harder for people to get in.
- Consumer to consumer relationships (such as eBay). Consumers can transact with each other such as Kiva. People can connect who wouldn’t ever otherwise meet. In the top list of charities, only 2 have changed. This is an industry that’s stuck.
- Scarce and Abundant. There has been a flip in what is scarce and what is abundant. The number of choices is overwhelming. Look at cell phones vs. water. Point well made. Attention is something that has gone from abundant to scarce.
- Triumph of big ideas. Big ideas are something people can get in a second. In a factory mindset, you’re always trying to improve.
- Who vs. How Many. Critical debate. Seth calls it a sweet spot. If you are in the business of getting attention when attention is abundant, such as the Super Bowl it matters a lot. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as how many as who does. Daily Candy is built around this idea. Women will go to the sample sales. They have successfully targeting the right group. We have an obsession with compete, Alexa, etc. It’s baloney. Hmmm. Focus on “who.”
- The New Rich. The rich are different than the rich used to be. We can find them everywhere we look. They look different, they spend differently, but they are just like everybody else. They are different than the “rich” of the 1920s. Ask yourself “who are they, what do they want”
- New gatekeepers, No gatekeepers. Who you knew and how you knew them mattered a great deal back in the day. Today you can put all you inventory online and anyone can find it. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you know, but you can put a PDF online and it will spread.
- Scarcity & Ubiquity (bonus; Seth rocks). Scarcity: Jerry Springer in concert – go to Vegas. Ubiquity: Seinfeld on TV (on every night). Ubiquity is uninteresting. Signed, personal items cost a money. Gotta love souvenirs. Spend 30 bucks on a t-shirt at Disney. They end up in the middle because people cannot decide (the danger zone).
Seth is going back to history lessons now about King Jolette. Wow, I’m learning a lot. Don’t know how much more the brain can take and it’s only the first session. Squidoo is built by people who are really bad at the old thing, look at the new trends and make it work. Threadless sells 40 million dollars worth of t-shirts with only a few people in Chicago. Onto Catherine Zeta-Jones who also owns a factory. She has to face some choices. Reference to writer’s guild strikes: things just don’t seem fair. You make it to the top of an industry and it falls apart. The information is free, but you can’t make the world go back. How can I take this opportunity to build new assets and succeed.
Replacements is built on this idea. Break your mother-in-law’s teacup? No worries about divorce court… buy pieces one at a time here. Zappos is huge because they are a whole different way to view online business.
The opportunity here is to go the next meeting and ask these hard questions. There is always that meeting about where to go next, but it usually gets waterted down, studied, compromised and ultimately fails. There is a lot out there for the taking.
Questions from the audience: People who want choices and we can benefit from that. People don’t know how many are out there, so how can they benefit from them?
Seth’s answer: Use the long tail. 1) Tell a story and 2) search matters (Thanks for the props). The stories can be inexpensive if the audience is already captivated. The generic story to the generic audience is harder to tell. Figure out the story you want to tell and tell it to the group who wants to hear it the most. We don’t waste as much time today online. We don’t learn about things we don’t want to learn about.
Q: How can mobile turn into a marketing platform.
Seth: Mobile might be the next big thing but it’s not going to be a big Web browser. It’s the ultimate permission medium. We don’t want people to call us/ text us/ spam us on our phone if we don’t ask. We want to know where we are, what we want and give us the information when we want it. To get into mobile: am I about this moment, place or about connecting to this person who is willing to be connected?
Q: Paddy has a question about using Second Life and asks is this a “meatball sundae” or a blue box with a gimic.
Seth: Care about each other, new places to go, new experience. Second Life is not the medium to use. Find the other scuba divers, form a network and we’ll coordinate the trip and make it happen. Find products for your customers, not customers for your products. They can be left out or they can be in. People want to be in. They also want a moderator (not to exploit, but to lead them). If you don’t do this, someone else will. And they will become the most successful in this sphere.
