Seth Godin Discusses This is Marketing

close my laptop so give me a second here to make it wake up sorry about that look at that sorry I wrote a book once another one coming and that's what we're going to talk about today have now talked about it before in person so we'll see what how it goes and there's a treat from PPI that I think everyone got it in that little box and inside the box is something we're going to talk about so hold on to that for just a second the essence of what I want to teach people is that marketing is not advertising I know you're not supposed to say that at advertising week marketing and advertising or not the same thing they used to be the same thing but they're not the same thing anymore and when we do marketing we get a chance in this attention choked and trust our world to do work that matters not for everyone but for people who care and this is hard for your bosses because what they are used to doing when things get tough is more of what they're used to doing so it's if you're on a bike and you're in a jam what you do is you pedal faster and pedaling more and pedaling more and pedaling more supposed to get you out of wherever you are here's footage from the bike race in Italy and what you see is this guy's trying to pedal in penalties in last place it's not working so we decide that there might be a different way a better approach using aerodynamics in it and a clever thought about how he could look at things differently and I think that what's happened since the birth of the Internet is this shift is going on and some people are learning how to look at things differently and other people are struggling with that in June I was lucky enough to go up to Ottawa to give a talk and I got there I'm walking through this pedestrian Plaza and then this huge sculpture and I think oh wow that's cool its first peoples term that I don't know a wat oh we can learn how to see what's happening as told you trying to force it to be something else that matters here's the truth the truth is the Internet is the first major medium in history that wasn't built to make advertisers happy the reason they have magazines is they need a place to put magazines but that's not and so this approach to say how do we Jam ads into corners where they weren't supposed to be when there's a billion channels and I can change the channel with a click has caused a lot of stress for a lot of advertisers and marketers it's not what you okay so how do we then explain what works how do we figure out what we ought to be spending our time on and in ancient times the way that they tried to figure out the future was by doing little rolling ponies then you would take rib from various animals like we slipped one side or the other and there's traditions in many cultures of this idea rolling them so we gave you eight bones inside that little box and I want to talk to each one of them as we go the first one is who's it for and what's it for that I believe that what marketers do for a living is we make changes happen if there is no change we didn't succeed that's what we do what you think yes or not I make bleach or I make movies dancers I make a change and you cannot make a change for everyone that has never happened what you could do is change someone so you can be really specific about who is the someone what is the change can you make who's it for and what's it worth and if you can't answer those two questions then the most important thing you can do as a marketer has not spent more money the most important thing you can do as a marketer is push back the team can answer those two questions who is it for and what's it for every Sun on the way to the airport was a sign for what is it trying to do if you change my behavior every teacher on every Appaloosa for what second one shutting the non-believers turn your back on the non-believers they're not there for you but there's no such thing as mandatory education for adults there's hardly as such a thing as mandatory education for children it's very difficult to educate someone against their wishes so what we need to seek is enrollment and enrollment means I want to go where you are going I don't need to be constantly hustled I'm enrolled in the journey so when someone who isn't enrolled is sitting there with their arms folded hassling you hey it's not for you this is not for you that's okay and the third one is that what those two things when we add them up mean is it the future of marketing is to identify and serve the smallest viable audience not the biggest one that was 1960 that was Procter and Gamble that was Don Draper because if you were gonna run ads on a TV network you better had something everyone wanted average stuff for average people it hasn't been one brand of import built that way in a decade despite what the people who were paying your bills believe not one mass-market brand built on TV in the last 10 years in the 60s there was one built that way every week there hasn't been one in the last 10 years because there is no mass-market anymore we gave you a choice they took the choice and as a result what we get to do as marketers is instead say we get to pick any people we want which people will we pick who's it for what change are we seeking to make what's it for if you can't delight those people enough that they would miss you think you made a lousy product then you didn't keep your promise go back and start over and I'm really impatient with marketers you think that just because they have money they have a right to our attention they don't and just because they have a boss they have a right to steal our trust and break their promises they don't and consumers aren't standing for it anymore and the next one is the definition of culture which is that people like us do things like this and if I had only seven words to describe all of marketing that would be it people like us do things like this so you get to pick who the people like us are and you get to figure out what the things like and if you don't know that people like us are you're gonna find her if you don't know what do things like this up your father but if you get them both right then you actually change the culture and then we get to this idea of Metcalfe's law first person with a fax machine what exactly did they do with it you can't use a fax machine by yourself right all of you every single one of you has been on Twitter how did you hear about Twitter from their Super Bowl apps you've heard about Twitter from someone who is on Twitter why did they tell you about Twitter so you would follow them on Twitter that's the network effect then it works better when more people are using it that it will be in my interest to tell you about it because the cycle continues so a tiny little example write this book 13th 14th something like that almost no one will read it if 1% of the population of the United States readers that's a huge one smallest Bible are some of the people who read it will realize that if their co-workers read it their job will go better so they will buy copies for their co-workers because the network effect kicks in the book is better if you don't read it by yourself so I try to take my own advice I'm not that much of a hypocrite but the idea is simple which is I know you'd like to cut through the market like a hot knife through butter at the Thresher we feel like you'd like to be on the Super Bowl on the homepage of the internet but the internet doesn't so that was in the first five when you find yourself frustrated throw one of those sticks on the table and you can say what am I missing here because if you get all five of those things right in the macro you're off to the races but there's more than five sticks so the next stick this starts to get into the Masterclass stuff and most people who are gonna engage with the ideas in this book are gonna get deep this is why I wrote the book for millions of years this question is the most important question that virtually every sentient animal asks if you're a squirrel or Rhino or dinosaur who eats lunch first matters more than almost anything else because if there are scarce resources and everyone else gets to eat lunch first you're not gonna have any plants opening and your genes go away who eats lunch first is about status so here's the way I like to think about it everyone here saw the first episode for the movie first four minutes it's all you need to see it's Don Corleone's wet daughter's wedding day and the Sicilian tradition is on your wedding day I get artists wedding day you must grant the favor of anyone in the village who comes to ask you a favor it's a status thing so who eats lunch person you are a high-status someone comes to do an ask you for a favor on this day you must grant it so who comes to see the don buona sera buona sera is the Undertaker he weighs 96 pounds he's wearing an ugly black suit is there anyone lower status more caricatured than the little skinny Undertaker of course not and the undertaker comes to the dom and says will you kill that people hurt the men who hurt my daughter now the dogs got trouble because if he grants never favor he's a hoodlum worse POTUS era pushes and says I will pay you now he's not just a hoodlum he's a hoodlum who just does it for the cash the Don can't survive this because his status will go down if he does and all the Don keeps track of is where do I write that's his only meaning in life and in the last like 15 seconds Coppola flips the whole thing upside down and you end with buona sera kissing the Dons ring and pledging allegiance and it all worked out for the dog but that's all the movie is for the next you know six hours so when we think about why should someone buy this product why should someone sign up for this service what they are saying is not do I need a different brand of deodorant do I need a different kind of shoes they're saying what will this do to my status well I move up will I move down not everyone wants to move up not everyone wants to stay where they are everyone has got a different dynamic in their head and we need to be really clear about what are we doing to status wolves when we're campaigning to get someone to vote for something or we're trying to get someone to buy something the other thing that happens because marketers make change is we also make tension because nobody changes easily we know that before anyone buys anything their heart rate goes up because they're saying this might not work they're saying that sells my plan for what will happen to my status might backfire they're saying I might buy something and then it will pay off so what we get to do as marketers if we want to make change you don't have to create tension the tension that overcomes the fear that's already there the tension of wait I might miss this wait I might fall behind wait this is a really good thing and if I don't say yes I'm not gonna be okay or the next one is how to explain what happens when people don't do what we think they were going to do and the answer is the fear the fear it is not the fear of horror movies it is the fear that drives us to make most of the decisions that we make in a minute I'll take a story that I think will wrap all of this up going back to who eats lunch first one of the things that has split our culture worldwide is really surprising and fascinating and disturbing difference in how different human beings deal with tension and status some human beings do you like as professional wrestling not all of life but in whatever moment they're in they may adopt the mindset of dominance which is oh I pinned you to the ground or oh the person I follow the person you follow who can make the other side stand down that is the model of dominance the other model of affiliation is who is standing next to me on this walkathon where we are raising money for nonprofit who am i alike with what group am i part of what cadre what tribe and they can be in one human being sometimes they were thinking about affiliation and sometimes just thinking about dominance but we see it's showing up over and over and over again and there's a video I didn't bring that been seen on the Internet of two guys once driving a brand new howdy in one's driving a joky old are fighting for one lane on a busy road and it ends up with the Audi like slamming so I'm wracking his $75,000 car because he can't let this other person be ahead of him in the lane now you've all seen versions of this in real life affiliation or dominance which one are you selling when you show up and I think it's the last one sometimes people come up to me because they like my folks are very grateful or tries and they'll start about their trot you don't have a try I don't have a time if you're lucky there might be a tribe that would like you scenario for them there might be a tribe of people that would like you to lead them but if you go away the tribes not all right there's harley-davidson stop making motorcycles the harley-davidson time to find some other way to stay connected so the question is these people who are alike who share a dream and a culture and a desire to go somewhere who is coordinating them who is helping them become the person that they seek to become as a group who is building the network affect the people like us do things like this and why isn't it you because I don't think your job it's used a spreadsheet a media buying agency an ad agency so that you can interrupt some people who don't want to hear people because we don't have to be narcissistic you know maniacal short-term profit seekers what we actually are are caring people who do work that matters for people who care and so when I add all these things up I'm never and I Fred I don't know a thousand marking but I've never seen anybody talk about this as what we do so that's why I couldn't put down what I had written and I had to say to Nicky let's make a book out of this thing and what's happened we run a seminar online called the marketing seminar calm and at the marketing seminar 6000 people have been through the curriculum what we do there is they all work it out online with each other and it's been fascinating it's been fascinating to watch people in industries I've never even heard of engaged with these ideas and discover that this starts to explain what was around for them so so the thing is the guy finds a new way to be in this world and he's very proud of himself so now it's gonna industrialize he's gonna figure out how to market his knees gonna figure out how to make this the official way to ride bikes but of course someone copies you and then you have this and I think that's fantastic then you have to start over right because we are no longer in this era oh we figured out is how advertising works now for the next 60 years let's just do it it's gonna keep changing the way we tell our story is gonna keep changing the way we interact keeps changing so what we get to do is to make things better by making better things we don't do that by marketing at people we can't do by marketing and so so one of the most formative parts of my recent career was a trip I took to India I was working with a company called vision spring the vision spring makes reading glasses for the billion people on earth who need them and don't happen and you can produce a pair of reading glasses in China for about two dollars and what vision spring does is they go with their local team two villages and sell these glasses for three dollars a pair that's enough money to buy more glasses and scale to infinity and the people that they're going to serve turn 50 they know they need glasses their friends have glasses they know glasses are not a revolutionary technology but now they're unemployed because they can't weave or they can't type or they get into any of the jobs they would like to do because in the old days when you turn 50 or get now you're not dead you're gonna be around for a while this is something you will need and so we show up in this village and it's a hundred and six degrees out I don't like being haunted by being in the weather and I'm standing there and there's a line of 25 people waiting to come to this table because it's noon there's nothing else to do and I can see the people waiting in line have money in their pocket I can see the money so that's not the question I also know that they know about classes and you part of this modern world they come to the front of the line and they take a reading test after they take the test and fail it they hand them the sample pair of glasses and instantly they can succeed so there is no doubt that the product works then they say all right thanks for that come over here here are 10 different styles of glasses all individually wrapped which one would you like and while I'm standing there with the people with the money in their pocket failed the reading test standing at the table 2/3 of them buy nothing 2/3 of them will leave without a pair of glasses and I'm standing there and I say you know some people think I know a little about marketing but if I can't figure out how to help in this moment I have to just stop what this makes no sense to me so I took out the ten sticks and after 45 minutes I changed one thing and I doubled the percentage of people who bought very double all I did was got rid of all 10 pair of glasses and then we said to people who were sitting at the table which would you prefer you can give us back the glasses you're wearing or you can give us three dollars it shifted from desire for gain and shopping which is not a thing that most people on earth get to do it's not a thing most people owners want to do cuz shopping is filled with tension and risk and fear and it's nothing that you learned how to do to avoid it's a failure which is I have something that works don't take it away and so that was about going to where the customer was and I think I want you to act like a teenager at the mall now instead it was this is what you say you want you have it happily I'll take it back from you do you want to keep it there you go and that shift totally changed the way I thought about how we can be in the world as marketers so unless one of tech is this but a couple years after that I was invited to cool conference in New Mexico my family got to go there would play right there authors and captains of industry and the sunset 44 degrees up which I like way better than 105 degrees there's 44 degrees upper is cold and we're on this Mesa outside they gave everyone in mind yes and we sit around the campfire the Sun has set and the guest speaker comes out and it's Neil Armstrong and Neil Armstrong is about to tell us the story of the power and as he's taught the biggest full moon rises any pauses and he looks over his shoulder and says I've been there because their footprints on the moon why we're running here from technology there are footprints on the moon and so we have this leverage for the first time in history were connected to a billion two billion people with a click we get to do work that matters for people who care if we can find the empathy to see them so bond I see you I recognize you I know who you are where you're from and where you want to go not because I'm invading your privacy but because I'm training with the dik-dik that dignity to know that you have dreams that might not allow anyone if you have desires that might not align with mine but I would give you space and leverage to go to do that thing you want to do because I can build my culture I can organize the time not everyone I can't maybe 100 people 1000 people and if I can build a network effect maybe 2005 and at each of you here make life better for 10,000 people he sets a lot of people and so I hope that what I've helped you do here is think a little differently about what we see when we see what human beings are doing and why they're doing it I hope you can seed it if you're using Facebook as a citizen you're the customer right and then there's all these forces at work chasing our attention and chasing our money but we can do better than that because what we can do is [Applause] thank you thank you and and I appreciate being part of it having the association be part of again this presentation but one of the things that you've consistently guns is um a physical aspect yeah to the words that you write in your electronic communications where does it fit in you know I'm gonna do that right we're gonna talk about the physical that's very nice so where does it fit in for you and by the way everyone here will have a copy of this journal along with the intense ticks and it's in that box [Music] and human beings aren't very facile with numbers only seven so when we can create a physical instantiation of something it's two things first for me it is a very significant signal flag that the creator of it thought it was important all right so I love that I get to write a blog post every day 7400 so far but sometimes an idea says this is too important to be a blog post so I'm gonna go through a year of pain and suffering to make it on paper right whereas if I only focus on the Kindle I can promise a kindle book every week it's all the other stuff we got to do what we break atoms it's the world and then the second part which is really important if you want your idea just Brad is when you give someone an idea with words maybe they'll tell you if you give somebody something that they can hand somebody else that becomes the medium plus I love make it so we feel very fortunate because out of all of the mediums that we see represented here people say thank you actually when we when we're giving them that advertising we give away the books here because I thank you for giving me that it's a great way to break through the clutter you talked about tribes is the so somebody who has these sticks does that mean that they're there creating your tribe where they're identifying himself okay so early the thing about tribes is it's an attitude and it's a choice so what we know for example you go to a hockey game not everyone at Madison Square Garden is in the truck there's one tribe that people wearing a certain jersey sitting in a certain section we're drinking a certain beer we want to see a fight on the ice they're very different than the executives in the skyboxes who are just there to do a deal right so tribes get to our human need to be with people who we think are like us so it's not about gender or race or age or even income it's this choice of a psychographic at where we feel at home so for me when I met Alan and Bill for Fast Company and these people are collecting a group that wanted desperately not that modern festivals I wanted to be part of something and they had a decade where they got to deal with that where the summer camp which I used to run up in Canada I could show up there and there are people I've never met but I know them because we're the child and so they're all over and this group here I'm flattered that people recognize me on my way in but I can also go to a conference of people in the gardening industry there have nothing in common except that I'm narrating something for them so that's why I can't say they're in my truck they're not but everyone's well I get to show up and take have you noticed this it's something that I wrote down during your presentation was narrating for them that's huge that's my point is just because you know what we said to Walter Cronkite and his peers was the FCC says there's only three TV networks use them wisely the Public Interest actually and we don't want you to race to the bottom because we're giving you our spectrum to use but now the internet comes along if everyone has a channel I feel that I can say whatever I want right which I don't well it might be technically legally true it's not morally true you can't say anything you want because you have a responsibility the minute you organize before people and you start yelling fire dad will get you in trouble because there are repercussions to it and marketers who have money it's twice as important because not only are you talking you're buying attention and then you better own the impacts of what you're doing so you have a quote that I use at the end of every one of my presentations when I talk about too much more products and it says you have to market with people not at them and that the marketing needs to be voluntarily consumed right what does that mean well before the invention of the remote it was too much trouble together during the channel now we know that you know if YouTube makes the video commercial too long they're gone right and if you are learning things that people want to skip your marketing at them right what you want to do is be the one that if you didn't run that news didn't run that announcement didn't put that sample out there he wasn't where is it I miss it and he said well no one would ever want that for what I mean and so I say make something else could you really spoken about reaching your smallest possible he was 10 years ago out of the room why get left out of amount of time it's still really difficult what has happened over the last four months since I've been talking about this people say yeah yeah yeah that makes sense how do I reach more people and I point them to one of my most popular blog post which is called first ten and the idea is if you can so amazed ten people with somebody that has a network effect you're done 10100 they got a thousand if you can't find me ten well you have the defect marketing doesn't have an event and so no I can't tell you how to reach more people what I might be able to help you do is making product or service that people would want great I think we have a few minutes for some questions so it's two part saying one is it has to matter to someone not to large number people but two and this is huge and usually overlooked you have to be willing for you to see whenever you number people to say you are full of it that you know no idea what you're talking about that you were just wrong and you know my first year in the book business I got eight hundred rejections in a row and I've been you know super fortunate my whole life is filled with privilege but the feedback Publishers Weekly hated nine of my books in a row that's cool I look that's a good thing right that's my point is writing the sequel to permission marketing or the sequel the purple count would have been easy you wouldn't make my publisher happy but that's not what I wanted to stand for so if you stand for something to someone you can persist at that particularly if you do it generously if you want to at the same time fit in all the way now you've got troubles okay so we have some questions that come through the first word skip the first one I like our consumers driving brand initiatives for a brand's driving consumer conversations okay so what's a brand a brand is not alone up a brand is the expectations we have of what an interaction is about to me so if Nike own opened a hotel most of us could guess what it would be like right whereas if Hyatt made a sneaker no one would have any idea what that's like it doesn't have a high it may have a habit with people I don't stand for anything different and the hotel is just like them so to really have any brand is to have this expectation that you've earned over time for keeping a certain distinctive promise so there are certainly some brands who have chosen to be acting on behalf of these consumers in a vanguard to change the conversation and so we think about you know what happens on the internet with privacy there's certainly going to be people who freak out when there's some thing that goes wrong but there's also institutions profit and nonprofit left always wanted privacy so they can now drive the conversation because you have an option you can go over there whereas if there was no option it would be like you know complaining about today's weather might be fun to play but you're not gonna do anything but mostly I think people like us do things like this means the culture drives everything culture eats strategy country needs money culture education if we can figure out where culture is we can throw how to shift culture then we've got a shot that most people who are super successful marketers are actually culture surfers there were the right place to the right time offering a segment of the culture something that they wanted grab another question CERN in the background I see so what I heard was you heard from the states that moms are angry and the question is does that change marketing as usual that what I'm hearing right so here's what I think is so important to understand the number of people who are producing what well everyone is talking about today is less than a hundred thousand the number of people who are engaged in what they are producing is a few million and so it's easy to believe that blanket statements like the word moms could be followed by anything that is true and if you engage with smallest viable audience what you have to say back which moms there have always been so many moms but not all moms have ever been angry so who are your moms your moms how do they feel the moms you want to serve because if you if your business plan says we aim to serve angry moms who have these needs and wants and desires I think I hear you but if you make a product for all moms I'm saying you're doomed because what Amazon is doing is saying yeah the last time I saw from a few years ago one third of all the sales of Tide detergent went to Walmart so for a little while that means Proctor and Gamble has power over Walmart but really soon after that Walmart has power over Procter and Gamble because if 130 your sales are going through a commodity seller all walmart has to do is set the price because they will because they have the hard part we're just connection and trust to the consumer well once Amazon steps in and everything is a click away and something starts making a profit and amazon knows it they'll just make their own version of it so as soon as you say we are for everyone and this is the best of the commodities and there is no network because no one knows what kind of detergent you're using then instantly I'm either going to be a normal person and buy the cheap one or an edge case and buy the whole grain gluten-free bah-bah-ba-wa but in the middle the expensive middle so you started out and I've heard you say this before that the Internet is can only be good not creative sellout deduction does it have a placement where where is the place for it now you ever not in the advertising where is the place for advertising the internet or even the advertising in the internet so here's what we know we know that you can make a two-hour long video about the features of this new electric Jaguar you made and you can go into great detail and I'll put any gimmicks in it to keep you for watching and you can put that on YouTube for free and 12,000 people watch until the end and if you can figure out if 12,000 people watching to our videos how to get them to one about your car then maybe to make my car but if your boss says no we need a hundred and twenty thousand views now you're wasting your final because now what you said is oh we by intention by the pound and we don't care right the same way New Yorkers use water no I come here in the desert with water you don't take a 45-minute shower when you're in the desert because there's not a lot of water well there's not a lot of attention so instead of strip mining it with pop-ups and pop-unders and banners everywhere we do the opposite you know when I was he goggles the homepage was sold out for a year and a half in advance now the thing about buying the end of the homepage was it cost more CPM than buying the specific audience you are reaching so why would you pay a higher CPM to reach everyone who wasn't interested and the answer was so you could say to your boss look at my number look at my foot rating point and that's exactly the opposite of what you do like what you do is say we're gonna be a meaningful specific not a wandering get her out absolutely and we get to have people identify themselves with tribes by the things that we give them the physical and again thanks for joining us [Applause]

Channel: Dan Galante

Views: 14,944

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Keywords: Seth Godin, This is Marketing, Marketing, Advertising Week

Id: AwvOl0aKLAE

Length: 38min 34sec (2314 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 02 2018