Seth Godin's Blog, page 302

Quieting the lizard brain

How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior?

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don't read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we're amazed...

The difference between a bonus and free

Free is something you get, no matter what.

A bonus is something you get as an add-on when you purchase something, or trade your attention.

The purpose of free is to spread the word, alert the universe and generate interest.

The purpose of a bonus is to reward immediate action and to sway the undecided.

Here are some free things we built for Linchpin:

Download an eight-page manifesto from Changethis. (My favorite one)

Find posters and riffs on Scribd.

See a brainstorming video on Vimeo.

Watch...

Jumping the gun

There's going to be a lot of hoopla this week, some of it on this very blog (three posts already today!).

I want to be the very first author to announce a new project for Apple's tablet.

Apple is announcing the device tomorrow (I wish they had waited a week), but I thought I'd let you know early that I've licensed Vook the rights to Unleashing the Ideavirus so they can convert it into a multimedia app. It should be finished before the tablet ships, so we intend to be ready when they are.

Steve...

The 2.0 media tour

[I'll be updating this post all day, just fyi, click through to see the latest update]

You know by now that I haven't gone to any traditional media for the launch of my new book - no pitches to newspapers, magazines, or television. Instead, I went directly to my readers and the many intelligent voices online. I sent review copies by request to my readers - who were generous and creative in their reviews, and now we'll hear from the bloggers and other online denizens. This is the short head...

Why write a book?

If you've never written a non-fiction book, there are a lot of reasons why you might want to. It organizes your thoughts. It's a big project worthy of your attention.

Noted.

But once you've written a book, it's not clear that it's a useful thing to publish one. After all, it takes a year. It involves a lot of people. You need to print a lot of copies, ship them everywhere, create a lot of hoopla and hope that people actually a) hear about it, b) decide it's worth the effort to track it down...

Making art

My definition of art contains three elements:

Art is made by a human being.

Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.

Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording... but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art.



By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

The ubiquity of competition

Sure, there are playoffs in football, but competition is everywhere, we just forget to notice it.

There are three hundred photographers looking for work in a particular specialty. One puts a creative commons license on his shots in Flickr and they start showing up in many places, from presentations to brochures. Which of the 300 photographers has won the competition for attention? Which one of the three hundred has shared his ideas enough to be noticed?

There are twenty towns you can choose...

The false solace of vilification

File this one under basic human emotions that marketers need to be aware of.

When a global slowdown, national tragedy or random event hits, people look for someone to blame. If there's no one to blame, sometimes they look for someone to hate, even if it is ultimately self-destructive.

A novice computer user downloads viruses, interacts with spyware and encounters a system crash. He calls tech support for the word processor he uses and lets them have it with both barrels.

A flood hits a town and ...

No, everything is not going to be okay

It's natural to seek reassurance. Most of us want to believe that the choices we make will work out, that everything will be okay.

Artists and those that launch the untested, the new and the emotional (and I'd put marketers into all of these categories) wrestle with this need all the time. How can we proceed knowing that there's a good chance that our actions will fail, that things might get worse, that everything won't end up okay? In search of solace, we seek reassurance.

So people lie to...

Too much data leads to not enough belief

Business plans with too much detail, books with too much proof, politicians with too much granularity... it seems as though more data is a good thing, because data proves the case.

In my experience, data crowds out faith. And without faith, it's hard to believe in the data enough to make a leap. Big mergers, big VC investments, big political movements, large congregations... they don't usually turn out for a spreadsheet.

The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of...