Seth Godin's Blog, page 300

The brand, the package, the story and the worldview

Madecasse has a lot going for it. It's delicious chocolate. It's made in Africa (the only imported chocolate made on the continent with local beans). The guys who make it are doing good work and are nice as well.

The question I asked them is, "does your packaging do its job?"

I don't think the job of packaging is to please your boss. I think you must please the retailer, but most of all, attract and delight and sell to the browsing, uncommitted new customer.

Let me take you through the...

The hidden power of a gift

If I sell you something, we exchange items of value. You give me money, I give you stuff, or a service. The deal is done. We're even. Even steven, in fact.

That's fine, but it doesn't explain potlatch or the mystery of art or the power of a gift.

If I give you something, or way more than you paid for, an imbalance is created. That imbalance must be resolved.

Perhaps we resolve it, as the ancient Native Americans did, by acknowledging the power of the giver. In the Pacific Northwest a powerful...

When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it

Too many people, when asked for their opinion, dissemble. Instead of giving an opinion, they push back. They ask,

What do you think?

Did you do any research?

Can we do a focus group?

What did Will say?

There's a typo on page three

How long do we have to study this?

Can we form a committee?

This is the work of the resistance. This is your lizard brain, hiding. It feels safe. It's not.

You're an expert. If nothing else, you're an expert on life, on your opinion, on being a...

TEDthink

Can you factor this?

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If you're like most people, you get a little queasy at the thought. And when you were in tenth grade, you surely wondered why they were bothering you.

(the answer is (x-2) times (x-2), in case you were curious.)

It turns out that the real reason you needed to do this work was to be able to play with numbers in your head. Abstract numerical thought is an important skill among educated people.

Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It's going on...

Frightened, clueless or uninformed?

In the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you're going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.

Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term, it's a temporary state.

Clueless people don't know what to do and they don't know that they don't know what to do. They don't know the...

The least I could do

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.

No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.

Of course...

iPad app of my dreams: the digital talking pad

Here's the spec. If you build it and it's great, I'll use it and I'll blog it.

A while ago, I posted about the talking pad and a modern version of it.

I think there's a killer app version of this for the iPad, and I hope someone will build it. The talking pad is an interactive presentation tool for smart people.

Overview

It's a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let's call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear way. Along with the standard zoom...

The relentless search for "tell me what to do"

If you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."

When asked, resist.

Linchpin videos (first in a series)

We're traveling around, finding interesting people and asking them to riff for a minute or two about what makes someone indispensable. Kicking off the weekly series is Gary Vee. Click the picture to view it. We'll do four for February and see how it goes.

Shiny objects

If you're a hunter, are you wasting your gift chasing shiny but ultimately worthless objects?

And if you're a farmer, are you wasting your resources by planting and nurturing a crop that's fashionable but without real value?

It might be fun to win a Grammy or dominate your category in terms of market share, but what's it worth if it doesn't support the actual goal?

Marketing is more powerful than ever. We have more leverage than ever before. Which makes picking your milestones and your goals...