Meatball Sundae

Seth Godin's gentle urgency and deliberate enunciation work well with these important insights on how businesses can become aligned with the new marketing realities. The old ways that companies operated (meatballs) don't work when coupled with current marketing paradigms (sundae toppings). He says the instant communication made possible by the Web is just the medium for the real changes: 14 big-picture trends such as shortened attention spans, shifts in scarcity and abundance, decentralization of operations, lengthening of the popularity-distribution tail, and the demise of traditional gatekeepers such as the major record labels. These game-changing trends will be essential for organizations to consider as they reinvent themselves and begin to think of marketing as creating movements among consumers instead of delivering messages to individuals. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

September 24, 2007
Godin's latest business handbook (after Small Is the New Big
and The Dip
) revisits some of his most popular marketing advice, while emphasizing that it can't just be applied willy-nilly. In past decades, he says, companies were able to get rich by making “average products for average people,” but those markets have long since been sewn up; “mass is no longer achievable desirable.” Rather than simply rely on mass media to raise product visibility, “New Marketing” treats every aspect of interacting with customers—including customer service and the product itself—as an opportunity to “grow the organization.” In order to be successful with such marketing techniques, a company must change its practices across the board. Otherwise, you're just putting whipped cream on a meatball. Godin has a perspective on everything from blogs (don't bother unless you really have something to say) to the long tail (if it's as valuable to your company as the top sellers are, why aren't you paying more attention?). His arresting conversational style is sure to once again set the business world talking.