Seth's Blog

Every day, day in and day out, Tim Manners drips a new marketing idea. He finds something in the news and explains it. And now he has a new book out.

Tim will make you think twice about what you thought you knew.

Peter R. points us to this innovative free service run by Peter Shankman.

You tell him your name and email address, and a few times a day, he forwards you a list of reporters looking for experts to quote for various articles in various media. Sort of like Daily Candy for publicity hounds.

It doesn't work if you answer all the queries. So be honest with yourself, save your time and the reporter's. Just speak up when it's helpful.

Joe Biden is long winded. His voters say so, so does the press. And now his new boss does as well.

The feedback couldn't be more clear. So why not fix it?

Verizon has mind-numbingly bad customer service. People hate to call them. People switch providers just to avoid this problem. So why not fix it?

DiFara's makes the best pizza in New York. But it takes 90 minutes or so to get a pizza. Everyone complains, so why not fix it?

In the case of DiFara's, the answer is easy: because fixing it would make it normal. It would take away what makes the place special. People wouldn't complain any more, but people wouldn't go, either.

If your 'one big thing' is a key part of what makes you successful, how dare you change it.

On the other hand, if momentum or laziness or lack of will (or focus) is the thing holding you back, it's time to get serious. When you remove the one big thing from people's list of objections, your career and organization will take off.

Joe Biden can carry a timer in his pocket. He can become reticent in public. He can, in just one day of hard work, solve his problem. Verizon can invest focus and and money and solve their problem. AT&T can invest and fix their wireless network. It just takes commitment, not a miracle.

New startups can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars racing after a dream: a giant splash on launch.

Just imagine... a big spread in Time Magazine, a feature on all the relevant blogs, a glowing review in the Book Review. Get this part right and everything else takes care of itself.

And yet.

Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Harry Potter, Google, William Morris, The DaVinci Code, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later).

I'm as guilty as the next entrepreneur. Great publicity is a treasured gift. But it's hardly necessary, and the search for it is often a significant distraction.

It works for movies, in fact, it's essentially required for movies. But for just about every product, service or company, the relentless quest for media validation doesn't really pay. If you get it, congratulations. If you don't, that's just fine. But don't break the bank or your timetable in the quest.

People are fickle, but we're generally rational. When someone makes a choice (hiring, firing, choosing a vendor, buying a soda) they're using some sort of internal logic and reasoning to support that choice.

As a marketer, you win when they choose you.

So, why choose you?

The answer to that question is your competitive advantage. What makes it likely that more than a few rational people will consider their options and choose you or your company or your organization?

Truth: It's rarely a computerized cost/benefit analysis. Instead, it's a human choice.

When the factors that matter to me are processed through my worldview and compared against the options I'm aware of, I will choose you when your advantages are greater than the competition, provided I believe that you're worth the cost of switching.

Key points:

Matter to me: Not matter to you or to the next guy, but matter to me. That's all I care about. (Example: it might mean more to me that my friends use your product than it does that you're cheaper).

Worldview: Based on the way I see the world, the assumptions I make, the truth that I believe in. (Example: If I don't trust young people as a matter of course, I'm not likely to choose you if you're young, all other things being close).

Options I'm aware of: If I don't know about you, you don't exist.

Switching cost: The incumbent gets a huge advantage, especially in high cost/high risk/network effect instances.

Some of the ways you might build or maintain a competitive advantage:

Not on this list, at least not prominently, are "we are #1!", "we are better!" and "we try harder." Cheerleading skills are not a competitive advantage in most settings. And, with few exceptions, neither is "we are new." Also, "we are better and I can prove it," is rarely a successful argument.

Here's what your board wants to know:

Twenty-five years ago today (boy that was a long time) I finished the internship that changed my life. My bosses at Spinnaker Software gave me a lot of room and I ran with it.

Last March, I posted about an intern program I was starting.

I was overwhelmed by the quality of what I got back. (The quantity was expected... interesting internships are hard to find). I heard from students on most continents, with a huge variety of backgrounds and life experiences. And these people were smart.

Unable to just pick a PDF or two, I invited the applicants to join a Facebook group I had set up. Then I let them meet each other and hang out online.

It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:

Want to guess who I hired? (It was a paid gig and five ended up spending time with me in NY on a somewhat rolling basis). If you're hiring for people to work online, I can't imagine not screening people in this way. This is the work, and you can watch people do it for real before you hire them.

As I went to send a note to the 150 or so who didn't make the cut, it felt like a waste. A waste for me, surely, because here were a large number of over-talented, under-employed students facing a boring summer. And for them, too, because I thought some might want a chance to continue the virtual experience.

So I started a group on Basecamp and invited the rest of the interns to try an unpaid virtual experience. The idea was that I'd provide a platform and some projects, and they could (if they thought it might be interesting) participate online. No grunt work, just interesting stuff to try. To my amazement, more than sixty took me up on it. The conversations ebbed and flowed, the work got done (or didn't) but I think everyone learned a lot.

Part of the deal was that active participants would get a shout out here on the blog. So we've put together a PDF of handmade bios of some of the coolest interns in the program. A shortcut for anyone looking for smart folks from around the world.

If I did it again, I'd definitely do it again. I think that smaller, more closely managed projects would probably lead to more productivity, but I also know that when faced with opportunity and freedom, amazing people get stuff done.

If you gave this a try, I think it would be a brilliant move, for you and for the people you work with. It's clear that formal education is failing the smart kids entering our field (not certain what 'our field' is, but you know what I mean). We need to create pathways for students to discover that there's absolutely nothing holding them back.

Karim points us to this update on Kiva.org.

Kiva doesn't fund factory workers on an assembly line. They fund entrepreneurs who are changing a tiny portion of the world. It scales.

Here's a great idea.

What if your new rock group appeals to fans of the B52s? Or if your new book is just perfect for people who like Brad Meltzer? If you have a CD or a book or an idea that will appeal to a certain psychographic, it might not be so easy to reach just those people.

Dave came up with a super idea: go buy a bunch of B52s CDs. Then list them (brand new!) for sale on Amazon and eBay. Price them ridiculously low, like a dollar. The only people who are going to buy a copy are focused fans. Then, when you ship out the CD, include your new CD in the box as well. You've reached exactly the right people (purchasers! who spent money! who are fans!) at exactly the right moment. Why not include two or three in the box? Fans know fans, and they like spreading the good stuff around.

What a shame that Amazon hasn't figured out how to provide this as a useful service. Amazon knows who buys a lot, they know who reviews a lot... why not ask those people if they want a free prize now and then? An influential person would earn the right to a huge number of free samples. Radio DJs used to get them... but now, of course, it's us that are the DJs...

(It doesn't work so well for used cars, of course.)

This works for other fields as well. If you have a massage service that is the perfect complement to customers of a personal training service down the street, why not give that trainer a dozen intro gift certificates she can use to thank her best customers?

MJ points out that the few mainstream publishers that promote their books spend $10,000 or more on ads that don't work. Putting a book into the hands of 1,000 perfect fans may be a far smarter investment.

Thinking small, again. It tends to work. Along those lines, Rich has a neat promo going on.

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 the phone with me). Highlighting web traffic in this way is not helpful. All it tells me is that once again, the weekend was sort of slow.

Or consider this chart, the standard comparison display, from Google Analytics.

This chart is only useful if both months begin on the same day--once every seven months, give or take. Why isn't the computer smart enough to line the dates up for us?

Week on week and month on month matter a great deal online (and off). Daily charts, on the other hand, just confuse things.

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 voice mail systems.

But we get totally wigged out when a website knows too much about us, when we start talking to a voice mail attendant like she's a real person or when a photo or a robot is just too good. A magician is fine, an actual mind reader we burn at the stake.

The relevant issue here for marketers is what happens when our databases and predictions get too good. I don't want the hotel to automatically serve me the same breakfast as last trip, or for the doorman to pretend he's my friend just because he read a database entry.

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, but in a totally different way--with text that has the same power of a great cartoon. Thanks, Andrea, for sending it to me... I loved every word of it.

Cartoons work because they're not monologues. Even though the medium is one-directional, a dialogue takes place. In between the panels, in between the talk bubbles, the cartoonist demands you fill in the blanks.

This call and response gives the reader far more of a jolt than a paragraph in a book could. Even better, it gives the cartoonist the confidence to proceed boldly. He knows you're there, volleying with him, interacting with the idea as you read it.

Marketers are taught from the beginning to grab the microphone and never let it go. We can learn from authors and cartoonists and talk show hosts that sometimes you gain more power when you let the other person feel engaged.

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 people ringing your door asking for donations, don't give, no matter what.

If you think politics is too nasty and not focused enough on creating value, then don't donate to a candidate that's nasty, even if you agree (and even better, call or write and tell them why).

If you don't like bait and switch marketing, where promises don't match the product, don't buy it.

If you don't like snarky, angry blogs, don't read them.

If you deplore the lousy service at big chains or certain airlines, don't shop there, even if it's cheaper.

There's a new asymmetry, with loud consumers able to connect and actually have an impact.

We're all hypocrites, and we get what we pay for. The market is astonishingly quick at responding to what consumers do (and incredibly slow at reacting to what we say).

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, talking, with permission, to another person.
Email used to be honest interactions between consenting adults.
Facebook pages (and Wikipedia, too) were built by people, not staffs.
Twits came from real people, and so did instant messages.

One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling, spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives. The pronoun morphs from "you" to "me" to "us" to "the corporation" ...

The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with more leverage) to corporatize and anonymize the interactions.

The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.

My name is Seth Godin and I approved this message.

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) it might be a lot more important to know, "How are you going to do the next thing?" or "How are you going to do your vacation?"

Direction is drilled into us. Picking the right direction is critical. If you don't know the right direction, sit tight until you figure it out.

The hyperactive have trouble with this advice. So they flit like a hummingbird, dashing this way and that, trying this tactic or that strategy until something works big, then they run with it.

What we're seeing, again and again, is that both of these strategies rarely work.

Organizations that sit tight tend to get verry comfortable with sitting, and they don't move when they need to move. They want proof that the direction is the right direction, they study it, consider it, test it, and the next thing you know, they are fourth in a three-person market.

Organizations (and leaders, and followers) that flit have a similar problem. They're so good at flitting, so happy with it, that they continue to flit even when a decent path shows up. (Classic Dip behavior). No direction is perfect, so we play with a strategy for a while, but you know what, flitting is more fun, so we go back to that.

The alternative is to do your best to pick a direction (hopefully an unusual one, hopefully one you have resources to complete, hopefully one you can do authentically and hopefully one you enjoy) and then do it. Loudly. With patience and passion. (Loud doesn't mean boorish. Loud means proud and joyful and with confidence.)

No flitting, no waiting for proof. Just consistent, overwhelming performance in pursuit of a vision you believe in. That's far more important than which direction you chose in the first place. And yes, I think it's a marketing decision, because the market embraces 'how.'

Lesley reminds us of Herzberg'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 me more joy.

If one baseball game is good, season tickets are better. If $300 an hour for consulting is good, $400 is better.

Improved = more.

It turns out, though, that there isn't just one curve, there are two. The second one is about hygiene. Not just being clean, of course, but being in an environment in which certain requirements are met. All the farm-fresh groceries in the world won't make you happy if your kitchen is filled with bugs. A high-paying job that delivers a screaming boss, no job security and a home life fraught with tension isn't a stable place for most people. Not because the money isn't there, but because basic "hygiene" needs aren't being met.

We see this with computer hardware and software (crashing is a hygiene issue). We see it with thrift stores for food (freshness, or the appearance of it, is more important than money for many people). And we see it with every human resource issue.

Next time you try to grow market share, while it may be tempting to lower price or offer more features, perhaps it's worth considering addressing unfixed hygiene issues instead.

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 average has sunk. The question is: will it be so noisy and offensive that the rest of us just tune it out completely? Do you care enough to dig through the pond scum comments to find the pearls? My guess is that few people do. It's like most cell phone calls... not a lot of people listening, just waiting for their turn to talk.

On a closed, non-anonymous site I get to use, I'm noticing that the quality of comments continues to increase. I don't think people are dumb. I think ease of use combined with anonymity and vanity just makes them seem that way.

[Tim sends us to this powerful extension that boots out the coarsest comments.]

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 to launch a project. To make it a non-profit. To build it on a scale of a million dollars a year. To do projects that would involve certain types of growth but avoid others. To include primarily live events instead of online or media properties. He'd also decided not to create a self-propelling movement, not to be tribe-focused and not to be huge (or tiny).

That's a lot of decisions to make before you start.

Someone I met has a big idea. He asked me, "What should I title the book so the publisher will promote it?" There's a book? There's a publisher?

Your choices used to be astonishingly limited. Now, they're relatively infinite. Not just the choice of what color to make the logo, but the whether or not choices. Perhaps you don't need a live conference. Perhaps you don't need to write a book. Perhaps you don't need to start a non-profit. Perhaps you can spread your ideas and generate impact with more speed and more power but with a lot less traditional overhead.

I'm probably wrong, but making the decision before you make the decision seems backward.

[Updated: Upending a finely tuned machine: It's pretty clear that this post and the one before were seen by practitioners of click advertising as just plain stupid. If you read them the way they read them, that interpretation is entirely possible, and I apologize. My intent was to point out that we're creating a culture of surfers who just don't click on ads, which has far-reaching effects for our medium. For those that saw some other intent, I'm sorry. I'll try to do better next time.]

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 a magazine you like, you're more likely to click on an ad that lives on a relevant page you liked. Click fraud is a whole different game (primarily because the clicker benefits).

2. Much more important than that is thinking about the status quo:

The way that text ads work is this: you pay by the click. Then, after someone clicks, you get a chance on the page they land on to sell them something (a product, a service, signing up for a free newsletter, whatever).

The goal of the marketer is to have no one click on the ad EXCEPT for people who intend to buy. In fact, clever marketers try to sneak in ads that are unappealing enough that only the truly motivated will actually click.

And so, given the status quo, you beat it by getting fewer clicks and converting the ones you do get.

BUT

What if it became common for popular pages to generate lots of clicks? What if some of those clickers were less motivated?

Well, under the original status quo (TV thinking) this is good, because you got a chance to immerse someone in an entire page you designed. In other words, a chance to convert mild interest into big interest.

Under the current status quo  (click thinking) this is bad, because you paid for a window shopper.

My point was that if everyone started clicking, clickthrough rates would go up. For a while, there'd be an imbalance, and sites would make too much and advertisers would pay too much.

But then, advertisers would use the landing pages to start converting. They'd adjust to the new status quo, to seeing a stream of happy clickers who came through because they liked the page they were on. And they'd get better at converting those folks (something that doesn't happen now, because only the hardcore click through). Do you see the benefit? If more people convert, the budget goes up. The spend can increase because converting mild interest (which they don't see now in a rare-click world) into sales is profitable.

I think the most robust ad environment for the web is one in which more surfers give permission to more marketers to make their case. And one way to get that permission is to have a culture in which surfers agree to "pay" attention in exchange for great content.

Who wins?

Surfers, who get more great content and might actually learn about something they want to invest in.

Content providers, who get more money in the short run and in the long run, as more ads convert more people.

Advertisers, who can begin to reach the unreachable non-clickers.

The irony is not lost on me. The people who so desperately interrupt everyone all the time are now squealing because I'm recommending that more people pay attention to their offers.

"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 is that you're starving great content.

I can say this because there are no ads here but,

If you like what you're reading, click an ad to say thanks.

Pretty simple, but not an accepted online protocol, at least not yet.

If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don't have to buy anything (though it's fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click.

You still get what you pay for, even if you pay with attention.

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 your domain (Hotmail?!) and by the look of your bio on Squidoo or Linkedin or the number of typos in your instant messages. They even judge you by the typeface and ads on your blog.

So, are you getting good feedback on your brand presentation?

Would it hurt your feelings if I told you that your picture made you look dumpy? Or that it was boring? Or way too outre?

It seems like it's better to hear this from a few trusted people than to continue to stumble without knowing why.

I'm not proposing that you let the crowd dictate, or that you work hard to fit in. Far from it. I'm proposing that you know the impact your choices are having and act accordingly.

Pictures are the easiest. Post three or four and let trusted people vote (and tell you why). Don't pick the winner, but read their reasons. And yes, if connecting online is important to you, go ahead and spend a few dollars and get a good photo.

This isn't about ignorance as much as it involves effort. Once you pay attention to this, it'll get better.

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 hurts book publishers. It will never be adopted by them.

The Kindle is pretty cool. Non-techies like it.

The Kindle is sold out. Amazon doesn't know how to produce a product.

The Kindle is selling far more than anyone ever predicted.

The Kindle will sell millions and we are raising our predictions for Amazon's earnings as a result.

... The Kindle missed our estimates. See?

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."

When your story aligns with my worldview, we have something to discuss. When it doesn't, you're likely to be invisible.

A worldview is a lot like the strings on a piano or the cables in a bridge. When it hits something that is of the same frequency, it resonates. The cause and the effect embrace each other and the story sticks, and spreads.

It's essentially impossible to tell a story to an entire population and have it resonate with all of them. The global warming story, for example, has influenced some people a great deal and been dismissed out of hand by others.

While most marketers spend their time telling stories about themselves, politicians spend a lot of time telling (negative) stories about the competition. It's illuminating, because it makes the resonance idea really clear. [The rest of this post is about politics. It's okay with me if you skip it, feel free to do so if you expect to be offended.]

Here are two stories:

Choose your story (or the competition's story) wisely, because you have to live with it for a long time, and if it's not authentic, if it doesn't hold up, you're left with nothing. In the case of an election, the effect of your competitor's story on your base is critical. (And vice versa). John Kerry called George Bush dumb, but it didn't matter, because Bush's base didn't care that Kerry thought he was dumb. The people who did care had already decided not to vote for Bush, so the story had no power. Will McCain's base care that he's a fake? Will Obama's base care that he's untested and different?

I think that Obama's base isn't as shaken by that story as McCain's base is by the 'fake' one. The worldview that elected Ronald Reagan is one that admired his authenticity and his ability to stick to his principles. George Bush took advantage of that same worldview in the stories he told about being a strong leader. "Fake" undoes a lot of that.

The reliance on negative stories in politics makes me sick. I think we should be above that. The fact that negative stories have influenced every election of my lifetime, though, means that I'm wrong, we're not above it. If politicians are going to tell negative stories, they might as well pick useful ones.

Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That's your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn't just to tell the truth. It's to tell truth that resonates.

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 is created by us, the marketers.

Marketers trying to grow market share will always work to make their non-customers unhappy.

It's interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we're happy.

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 what turned me off, and I think it's the curve above.

Faced with the excitement of making a CD and all the knobs and dials, they overproduced the record. They went from being two real guys playing authentic music, live and for free, and became a multi-tracked quartet in search of a professional sound. And they ended up in the dead zone. Not enough gloss to be slick, too much to be real.

This happens at restaurants all the time. Give me a handmade huarache and it's fine if it's on a paper plate. Or give me something from Thomas Keller. But I have no patience for the stuff in the dead zone, the items that are too slick to be real, but not slick enough to be a marvel. Who, exactly, wants an industrial tuna sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap?

You can send me a hand-written note (but don't write it in crayon with words spelled wrong) and I'll read it. And you can send me a beautifully typeset Fedex package. But if you send me mass-produced junk with a dot matrix printer, out it goes. The dead zone again.

That's why really well done HTML email works, as does unique, hand-typed text email. It's the banal stuff in the middle that people don't read. And yet, 95% of what I see is precisely in the dead spot of the middle zone.

The Blair Witch Project and Pi both felt authentic. The Matrix was perfectly slick. The new Star Wars cartoon is just dumb.

That's why a personalized letter works better than a generic resume. We crave handmade authenticity and we adore perfectly professional slickness.

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 the two weeks while your competition (and the forces for the status quo) are snoozing--and turn it into a completed project?

So, here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire (I have no direct experience in this area, but I'm told that hair flammability is quite urgent).

Do nothing except finish the project. Hey, you could have been on vacation, so it's okay to neglect everything else, to put your email on vacation autorespond and your phone on voice mail and to beg off on the sleepy weekly all-hands meeting and to avoid the interactions with those that might say no...

And then finish it. Finish the website or the manuscript or business plan or the suite of tools. No, this isn't a great week to do outreach or make a pitch. That's not the goal. It's to finish that project that's been stuck too long. Finish it or cancel it.