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Seth's New Book (and MarketingProfs Seminar!)
Today Seth Godin releases his new book, Meatball Sundae, in which he questions: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? Here at MarketingProfs, we are lucky enough to be featuring the author himself in a virtual seminar based on his new release, in which he coaches marketers on "how to avoid the meatball sundae". I recently had a chance to chat with Seth briefly about his new book. In it, he challenges marketers to sync up their marketing with their products, rather than simply rushing to embrace the shiny and new (like blogs, YouTube, Facebook, whatever). Q: So what is a meatball sundae? A: Well, what's a meatball? It's a commodity, something we need, something made in quantity, something where the cheapest often wins. And the sundae toppings? They are the whipped cream and cherry, the fun stuff. They are new marketing - YouTube and MySpace and blogs and Google and the rest. Sundae toppings work great. Except when you put them on meatballs. A meatball sundae is the unfortunate combination of perfectly good average products for average people with the exciting growth opportunities of the new marketing. They're a disaster. Not very successful, nor very appetizing. Q: So what needs to change here? The meatballs? Or what's going on them? A. I think the solution is to make a choice: either make meatballs, make them really well, accept lower growth and ignore the new marketing or realize that this is a new industrial revolution and get out of the meatball business just as fast as you can. It's the chasm in the middle that'll chew you up. Q: Which is the way to go, based on your advice in the book? A: Both ways are fine. But be in sync. When Henry Ford came along, artisans continued to do fine. But without the assembly line, they couldn’t grow to compete. That didn’t mean that being Rolls Royce was bad. It was just different. The horrible mistake was to be out of sync, to not match. My advice is: this is the biggest revolution of our lifetimes. If you want that sort of ride, go for it, but go all the way to the base of your pyramid, not just as window dressing. Please join us next Thursday and hear Seth in person. P.S. Enjoy this special bonus "best of" newsletter, which hightlights just a fraction of our great content from 2007! Happy New Year!
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