Seth Godin on Standing Out

At a Glance

Who: Seth Godin, Writer, speaker, "change agent".
What: Standing Out Speech
When: 2003
Where: Monterrey, California
About the speaker: Godin is an entrepreneur and speaker who speaks about the end of the "TV-Industrial complex", getting ideas spread by "Sneezers", and calls the ideas spread by the sneezers an "Ideavirus." He says today's marketing strategy is reversed.
Web info: http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html

The marketing paradigm has shifted.

According to marketing specialist and entrepreneur, Seth Godin, not only has there been a paradigm shift; the marketing strategy he calls the "TV- industrial complex" has been destroyed.

In a 2003 speech delivered in Monterrey, California, Godin indicates that the successful marketing strategies developed and controlled by media giants in the past are ineffective today because "we are living in a century of idea diffusion".

According to Godin, "People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win."

Marketing strategies of the past generation focused on saturating the market--interrupt the consumer to sell a product.

That strategy fails today, Godin says, because consumer time is not spent on media portrayal of the newest thing.

New things are ignored because "there are way too many choices" regardless of who the consumer is or what the product is.

There is a new "me" focus on what is going to work for me where I am at this moment.

Godin says you notice what is new for a moment but "the thing that is going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built is is it remarkable".

"'Remarkable' means it is worth making a remark about."

Godin says the success of this strategy is: "Find a group that really, desperately cares about what it is you have to say; talk to them and make it easy for them to talk to their friends."

It is the force behind the Japanese concept of "Otaku". The obsessed tell their friends, and word spreads.

Godin's key to marketing success today: "...Figure out who does care, who is going to raise a hand and say I want to hear what you are doing next, and sell something to them."