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Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
August 2009
Monday August 31, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:10AM EST on August 31, 2009
When George Washington was a teenager, did he really, really, really want a car? Unlikely. In order to want something, you probably need to know it exists. But my guess is that it surely helps if you've been marketed to....
Sunday August 30, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:01AM EST on August 30, 2009
The following does not appear in the Star Spangled Banner: "Babe Ruth through the night..." When you do something by heart, it bypasses some of the common sense processing we use to navigate our day. Of course Babe Ruth wasn't...
Saturday August 29, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:36AM EST on August 29, 2009
The wrong way first: interview someone for an hour. If you like them, have them interview three or four other people in your organization for an hour each. You've invested five hours of your team's time, but really you only...
Friday August 28, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:52AM EST on August 28, 2009
The problem with customer service is not a new one. It's about balancing between serving a lot of people a little, or dropping everything to serve a few people a lot. Getting a lot of benefit for a lot of...
Thursday August 27, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:47AM EST on August 27, 2009
Atlanta brags about having the busiest airport in the world. Like most municipal facilities, they don't brag about having the best, the most pleasant, the most engaging or the most remarkable airport in the world. That's a shame, because airports...
Wednesday August 26, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:18AM EST on August 26, 2009
I was talking with a few executives from one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they were explaining how their hands were tied in moving forward on the internet. They were doing the best they could under the...
Tuesday August 25, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:50AM EST on August 25, 2009
If you need to get your audacious proposal/clever ad/new project past your boss, go ahead and add some gratuitous brackets here and {there}. "Hey, what are these weird brackets doing here," she might say. "Oh, I like them. I think...
Monday August 24, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:56AM EST on August 24, 2009
There was an attention drought for the longest time. Marketers paid a fortune for TV ads (and in fact, network ads sold out months in advance) because it was so difficult to find enough attention. Ads worked, so the more...
Sunday August 23, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:20AM EST on August 23, 2009
I want to thank those that have supported my book Tribes. It's been the #1 bestselling leadership book on Amazon for the last 300 days, mostly because the people who like it, talk about it and spread the word. Here's...
Saturday August 22, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:36AM EST on August 22, 2009
A simple quiz for smart marketers: Let's say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption. And let's say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon...
Friday August 21, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:57AM EST on August 21, 2009
In this era, there are two questions every marketer answers: Do I want people to interact with me and my brand in unexpected ways (as opposed to just quietly consume it)? When they interact, do I overwhelm people with delight...
Thursday August 20, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 12:45PM EST on August 20, 2009
Multiply the population of the US by three. That's how many people around the world live on about a dollar a day. Do it again and now you have the number closer to $2. About forty percent of the world...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:40AM EST on August 20, 2009
I think this is a big idea, but your mileage may vary. I've been having great success with a hybrid of the yellow legal pad and a printed presentation from Keynote (or Powerpoint). I use it during small meetings where...
Wednesday August 19, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:44AM EST on August 19, 2009
Zig Ziglar taught me about the most powerful way to use a yellow legal pad. He calls it a "talking pad." When you're in a small meeting (you and one or two other people) it's awkward to use a laptop...
Tuesday August 18, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:24AM EST on August 18, 2009
(not a typo). The long tale is the never-ending story you tell your prospects, your customers and your employees. The hard part is getting a little bit of permission to start telling your tale. The overlooked part, the part that...
Monday August 17, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:29AM EST on August 17, 2009
Actually, there isn't one, there are three choices that anyone offering higher education is going to have to make. Should this be scarce or abundant? MIT and Stanford are starting to make classes available for free online. The marginal cost...
Sunday August 16, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:24AM EST on August 16, 2009
Here's a surefire way to get and keep the attention of your audience: put on a soap opera. If there's always a feud, a criminal investigation, secret photos, innuendo, allegations of drug use, partnerships foundering, acquisitions started, delayed or canceled,...
Saturday August 15, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:13AM EST on August 15, 2009
Challenging the status quo is what I do for a living. Either that or encourage other people to do it. But there are two ways to do it, and one of them is ineffective, short-sighted and threatens the fabric of...
Friday August 14, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:44AM EST on August 14, 2009
I think internships are overrated. Most of the time, the employer thinks he's doing the intern a favor, but he doesn't trust the interns to do any actual thoughtful, intelligent work worth talking about. And to be fair, most of...
Thursday August 13, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 1:43PM EST on August 13, 2009
For a new project, I'm collecting photos of people who make a big difference in your working life. If you have a photo you can share (see fine print below) of someone you work with, buy from, sell to or...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:15AM EST on August 13, 2009
If you invent or launch or market (and you're human) it's likely that you have the voice of the critic in the back of your head. It's natural to fear what they'll say, and if you're not careful, you'll end...
Wednesday August 12, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:25AM EST on August 12, 2009
1. Go where your customers are. Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los Angeles, standing next to an organic lunch truck. Like the little birds that clean the teeth of the hippo, there's synergy...
Tuesday August 11, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:31AM EST on August 11, 2009
In most interactions, we take a defensive posture. We try to defend the brand, or our turf or our job. The problem with defense is that it's static. The best way to get smarter, to embrace and to cause change...
Monday August 10, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:17AM EST on August 10, 2009
In order for an idea to spread, someone has to do the spreading. In the dark ages (ten years ago), the only way to spread your idea on a large scale was to do it yourself. Lots and lots of...
Sunday August 9, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:10AM EST on August 9, 2009
The sign the broker posted in front of the house listed her name and then said, "#1 in Westchester, Top 10 Nationwide." What does that mean, exactly? That this real estate broker is the most successful broker in the whole...
Saturday August 8, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:28AM EST on August 8, 2009
Not photoshopped, I took it myself. The site is real. I'm trying to imagine someone driving along Highway 11 and making a note of this. For what? The next time someone gets bludgeoned in their living room? (And no, I...
Friday August 7, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:21AM EST on August 7, 2009
New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much approval and support to launch them. As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's...
Thursday August 6, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:26AM EST on August 6, 2009
This is the biggest disconnect I know of. It happens all the time in B2B sales, in service marketing, in getting along with your boss and even in hiring someone. One side thinks they have figured out a solution. They...
Wednesday August 5, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:29AM EST on August 5, 2009
Check this out. Every once in a while a cool graph pops into my head. Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes. On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the...
Tuesday August 4, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:29AM EST on August 4, 2009
Am I the only person who wants a Hi Def telephone? A headset that sounds better than the handheld receiver, and a handheld receiver that delivers the kind of quality calls we had back in the day... I want to...
Monday August 3, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:37AM EST on August 3, 2009
Global warming a problem? Just shave the bears. Let's define "bear shaving" as the efforts we go to do deal with the symptoms of a problem instead of addressing the cause of the problem. A rare Japanese PSA (now long...
Sunday August 2, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:18AM EST on August 2, 2009
That's what makes them storms. When someone describes a situation as a perfect storm ("two different backup servers failed, plus there was a blackout, no one could have predicted this, it was a perfect storm,") it's important to remember that...
Saturday August 1, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:44AM EST on August 1, 2009
Kevin Maney has a book out in September about the trade off between delivering extraordinary experiences (which he calls fidelity) and doing it in a way that's cheap and easy (convenience). The book takes this simple idea and supports it...
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