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Seth Godin's Blog
Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
August 2008
Sunday August 31, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 9:28AM EST on August 31, 2008
Please don't show me graphs that place the days in order, in a bar chart. I know it's convenient, but it's useless. Every week I get a chart like this, and every week Wednesday is after Tuesday (and Tuesday's on...
Saturday August 30, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:10AM EST on August 30, 2008
Tom points us to this fascinating concept. It's called the uncanny valley and it goes back as far as Freud. When you get too good at faking it, people freak out. We love cute dogs, cute monkeys, clairvoyant websites, smart...
Friday August 29, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:30AM EST on August 29, 2008
Tom Fishburne has a new book out, and you should take a look if you're seeking a new way to think about marketing, your brand, or your colleagues. The whole tour is here. Andrew Kaufman's book does the same thing,...
Thursday August 28, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:32AM EST on August 28, 2008
If you don't want spam in your inbox, never respond, never buy anything. Not even if it's a good deal. If you don't like TV commercials featuring loud aggressive announcers, don't buy what they're selling. Ever. If you don't want...
Wednesday August 27, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:56AM EST on August 27, 2008
Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter. Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual. TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live. Phone calls involved a live speaker,...
Tuesday August 26, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:37AM EST on August 26, 2008
Here's what they say to you when you graduate: "What are you going to do now?" And here's what they say to you when you're about to leave on vacation: "Where are you going?" In marketing (and thus, in life)...
Monday August 25, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:00AM EST on August 25, 2008
Lesley reminds us of Hertzberg's work on hygiene. It's not just theory, it's a vitally important marketing concept. It's easy to believe that joy lives on a simple curve. If you give me more of what I want, you give...
Sunday August 24, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:56AM EST on August 24, 2008
Jack points us to this regularly updated collection of inane, indecipherable or insulting comments from YouTube. When will it get better? Now that everyone has their own channel, their own newspaper, their own station, it's pretty shocking how low the...
Saturday August 23, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 1:09PM EST on August 23, 2008
A friend sent me a business plan the other day. He outlined four or five elements of the project he was launching and wanted my feedback on each. In our haste to get started, we jump ahead. He'd already decided...
Friday August 22, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 10:40AM EST on August 22, 2008
My last post about ads as tips led to a firestorm in my inbox, so a few thoughts: 1. I'm not suggesting click fraud, far from it. Just as you're more likely to go to a restaurant that advertised in...
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:13AM EST on August 22, 2008
"I never click on ads." It's almost a badge of honor to say that. The subtext is, "I'm too smart/busy to waste my time doing that," or perhaps, "I don't want someone to sell my attention." But the real effect...
Thursday August 21, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:55AM EST on August 21, 2008
Yes, it's true. People judge you. They judge you especially harshly online. They judge you by your teeny picture on Facebook (named, after all, after the original quick judgment document) and they judge you by your email sig file and...
Wednesday August 20, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 11:42AM EST on August 20, 2008
The Kindle is a lousy idea. No one will read a book that way. The Kindle is late. Amazon has no clue how to launch a product. The Kindle is poorly designed. See, we told you. The Kindle's pricing model...
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:42AM EST on August 20, 2008
Every person in the market has a worldview when it comes to what you're selling. It might be, "I don't care about that," or it might be, "all big companies are evil" or it might be, "I love new stuff."...
Tuesday August 19, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:27AM EST on August 19, 2008
A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy? What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does. And want...
Monday August 18, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:01AM EST on August 18, 2008
There was a terrific duo playing live music at the farmer's market the other day. They were well-rehearsed, enthusiastic and really good. Being a patron of the arts, I bought a CD. I hated it. I've thought a lot about...
Sunday August 17, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 8:31AM EST on August 17, 2008
In the US, the next two weeks are traditionally the slowest of the year. Plenty of vacations, half-day Fridays, casual Mondays, martini Tuesdays... you get the idea. What if you and your team went against type? What if you spend...
Saturday August 16, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 2:09PM EST on August 16, 2008
I don't take advertising on this site. I never have, I don't intend to. If there's a link on this site, it's because I thought it was a good idea. I don't get paid to include links. I write about...
Friday August 15, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:05PM EST on August 15, 2008
"My computer will call your computer..." Lisa points us Fonolo, a company in beta that spiders phone trees at big companies and promises to make it easy for you to go straight to the spot you want. Then it calls...
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:48AM EST on August 15, 2008
Of course you can. It's human nature to resist saying yes. Human nature makes us hesitate, sometimes for a week or a month, at the very last minute, at the moment of truth. One technique to get through this hesitation...
Thursday August 14, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:30AM EST on August 14, 2008
Let's say your service costs more than the commodity-oriented competition (I hope it does!). Where do you find repeat business or even new business? How do you make a sale (to another business or to a consumer) when you cost...
Wednesday August 13, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:06AM EST on August 13, 2008
Remember hand-written thank you notes? Then they became xeroxed form letters. And then mail-merged form letters. And then Amazon order confirmations by email. We tend to use new tools to do less. We try to save time and money at...
Tuesday August 12, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:58AM EST on August 12, 2008
I don't like popcorn. But today, walking by a bowl of it, I took some. Most people do. The thing about popcorn is that it is a low investment, low risk snack. You can eat it if you're not hungry....
Monday August 11, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 11:55AM EST on August 11, 2008
In a review of The Dip, a listener writes, "Many winners and people or companies that get great results or wind up on top simply stumbled into winning or lucked out! He ignores the whole notion of how randomness plays...
Sunday August 10, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:45AM EST on August 10, 2008
Patience. Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it. The iPod was a dud. I wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus 8 years ago. A few authors tried similar ideas but it didn't work right...
Saturday August 9, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:20AM EST on August 9, 2008
Stopped by a Whole Foods early one morning this week for an iced tea. I ordered a hot rooibos (you should try it) poured over a glass of ice. Whole Foods is under two kinds of pressure: shareholders that want...
Friday August 8, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 8:08AM EST on August 8, 2008
People need to understand motivation in order to make sense of a story. When we see a person or a business take action, our first move is to try to figure out their motivation. The why. The what's in it...
Thursday August 7, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:02AM EST on August 7, 2008
I confess. I like using it that way. I think architecting something is different from designing it. I hope you can forgive me but I think it's a more precise way to express this idea. Design carries a lot of...
Wednesday August 6, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:23PM EST on August 6, 2008
Good news in the, "if you use them as examples, good things might happen" category. Daily Candy, poster child for permission marketing, sold for $125 million today. and CDBaby, my favorite ideavirus/music industry pioneer, just sold for a billion simoleons...
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:50AM EST on August 6, 2008
Are consumers responsible for the behavior of marketers? Why does spam exist? Because (some) people respond to it. Why are ineffective pharmaceuticals so heavily marketed? Because (some) people demand that doctors prescribe them. Why are so many local stores struggling?...
Tuesday August 5, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:47AM EST on August 5, 2008
In the old days, a common DOS warning ended with, "...press any key." And yes, there were plenty of tech support calls that asked, "where is the ANY key?" Every interaction with your public runs the risk that some people...
Monday August 4, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:00AM EST on August 4, 2008
When you're done with your email queue, are you done? Do you spend your day responding and reacting to incoming all day... until the list is empty? ... and then you're done. I'm noticing that it's easier than ever to...
Saturday August 2, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:56AM EST on August 2, 2008
Sing it! I spent some time a few days ago listening to a nascent band performing classic rock songs. The first group sang a note-for-note rendition of a song by the Stones. The notes were right, but nothing else was....
Friday August 1, 2008
Permalink Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:18AM EST on August 1, 2008
Bert was happy to eat the leftover rice from the rice cooker, but he didn't want to grab something that someone else on the team needed. So he said, "I call last dibs." Dibs, of course, is a priority, your...