Seth Godin's Blog, page 319

The massive attention surplus

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 ads you bought, the more money you made, thus marketers took all they could get.

This attention shortage drove our economy.

The internet has done something wacky to this situation. It has created a surplus of attention. Ads go unsold. People are spending hours on YouTube or Twitte

Thanks for leading

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 a favorite excerpt:

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It's discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership w

Not so good at math

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 and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:

Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.

Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gall

Brands that matter

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 worth remarking about?

If you think about dead brands like Tide or United Airlines, the answer to both questions is clearly 'no'.

On the other hand, vibrant growing brands manage to answer both questions with a resounding 'yes.' It's not an accident and it's not easy

Patient capital, markets that work and ending the endless emergency of poverty

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 lives on $2 or less a day.

What's that like? What happens to you when you have two dollars a day to live on. It's almost impossible to imagine. I mean, $2 is the rent on your apartment for about 35 seconds. $2 buys you one bite of lunch at a local restaurant...

And yet, two billion people survive on t

The modern talking pad

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 more interactivity is useful, and where the group is too small for a laptop to be the best way to present slides (I think running a presentation says, "I talk, you listen...")

Here's how it works:

Create a presentation. A good one, not one filled with bullet points. Instead, graphs,

The talking pad

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 or Powerpoint, because it destroys the intimacy of the discussion. Basically, it says, "I'm going to talk to the screen and you can watch, okay?"

The alternative is to use a thick pen or marker and a legal pad.

Whenever you mention a number or make an assertion or promise, write it down. The act of writ

The long tale

(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 wastes all that permission, is that you forget to keep telling your story.

Are you really the same as you were a year ago? How often do you re-introduce yourself? What's truly new (as opposed to what does the salesforce think is new)? What's the next chapter that matters?

Education at the crossroads

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 of this is pretty close to zero, so it's easy for them to share. Abundant education is easy to access and offers motivated individuals a chance to learn.

Scarcity comes from things like accreditation, admissions policies or small classrooms.

Should this be free

Drama

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, secret new projects, and possible runs for office, you can bet people will tune in.

I apologize for the lack of drama on this blog (not really).

Michael Jackson, Fidel Castro and Sarah Palin created drama. Paying attention, though, is the not