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Seth's Blog
Getting reporters to call you 
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Fri, 05 Sep. 2008
Peter R. points us to this innovative free service run by Peter Shankman.
You tell him your name and email address, and a few times a day, he forwards you a list of reporters looking for experts to quote for various articles in various media. Sort of like Daily Candy for publicity hounds.
It doesn't work if you answer all the
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Fixing the one big thing
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Thu, 04 Sep. 2008
Joe Biden is long winded. His voters say so, so does the press. And now his new boss does as well.
The feedback couldn't be more clear. So why not fix it?
Verizon has mind-numbingly bad customer service. People hate to call them. People switch providers just to avoid this problem. So why not fix it?
DiFara's makes the best pizza in New York. But it takes 90 minutes
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The myth of launch PR
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Wed, 03 Sep. 2008
New startups can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars racing after a dream: a giant splash on launch.
Just imagine... a big spread in Time Magazine, a feature on all the relevant blogs, a glowing review in the Book Review. Get this part right and everything else takes care of itself.
And yet.
Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike,
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Your competitive advantage
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Tue, 02 Sep. 2008
People are fickle, but we're generally rational. When someone makes a choice (hiring, firing, choosing a vendor, buying a soda) they're using some sort of internal logic and reasoning to support that choice.
As a marketer, you win when they choose you.
So, why choose you?
The answer to that question is your competitive advantage. What makes it likely that more than
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Learning from a summer intern program
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Mon, 01 Sep. 2008
Twenty-five years ago today (boy that was a long time) I finished the internship that changed my life. My bosses at Spinnaker Software gave me a lot of room and I ran with it.
Last March, I posted about an intern program I was starting.
I was overwhelmed by the quality of what I got back. (Th
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The new meaning of Labor Day
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Mon, 01 Sep. 2008
Karim points us to this update on Kiva.org.
Kiva doesn't fund factory workers on an assembly line. They fund entrepreneurs who are changing a tiny portion of the world. It scales.
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Reaching the right people
(unknown author) via Seth's Blog on Mon, 01 Sep. 2008
Shared by chrisbrogan.com
This is actually pretty clever.
Here's a great idea.
What if your new rock group appeals to fans of the B52s? Or if your new book is just perfect for people who like Brad Meltzer? If you have a CD or a book or an idea that will appeal to a certain
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Every Sunday is the same
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sun, 31 Aug. 2008
Please don't show me graphs that place the days in order, in a bar chart.
I know it's convenient, but it's useless.
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The uncanny valley
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sat, 30 Aug. 2008
Tom points us to this fascinating concept. It's called the uncanny valley and it goes back as far as Freud.
When you get too good at faking it, people freak out.
We love cute dogs, cute monkeys, clairvoyant websites, smart voice mail systems.
But we get totally wigged out when a website knows too much about
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You get what you pay for
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Thu, 28 Aug. 2008
If you don't want spam in your inbox, never respond, never buy anything. Not even if it's a good deal.
If you don't like TV commercials featuring loud aggressive announcers, don't buy what they're selling. Ever.
If you don't want people ringing your door asking for donations, don't give, no matter what.
If you think politics is too nasty and not focused enough on c
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The first law of mass media
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Wed, 27 Aug. 2008
Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.
Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual.TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live.Phone calls involved a live speaker, talking, with permission, to another person.Email used to be honest interactions between cons
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'Where to' might not be as important as 'how loud'
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Tue, 26 Aug. 2008
Here's what they say to you when you graduate: "What are you going to do now?"
And here's what they say to you when you're about to leave on vacation: "Where are you going?"
In marketing (and thus, in life) it might be a lot more important to know, "How are you going to do the next thing?" or "How are you going to do your vacation?"
Direction is drilled into us. Pi
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More vs. enough
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Mon, 25 Aug. 2008
Lesley reminds us of Hertzberg's work on hygiene.
It's not just theory, it's a vitally important marketing concept. It's easy to believe that joy lives on a simple curve. If you give me more of what I want, you give me more joy.
If one baseball game is good, season tickets are better. If $300 an hour for consulting
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Monkeys with megaphones
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sun, 24 Aug. 2008
Jack points us to this regularly updated collection of inane, indecipherable or insulting comments from YouTube.
When will it get better?
Now that everyone has their own channel, their own newspaper, their own station, it's pretty shocking how low the average has sunk. The question is: will it be so noisy and offensive that the
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The decision before the decision
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sat, 23 Aug. 2008
A friend sent me a business plan the other day. He outlined four or five elements of the project he was launching and wanted my feedback on each.
In our haste to get started, we jump ahead.
He'd already decided to launch a project. To make it a non-profit. To build it on a scale of a million dollars a year. To do projects that would involve certain types of growth but avoid
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Beating the status quo
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Fri, 22 Aug. 2008
My last post about ads as tips led to a firestorm in my inbox, so a few thoughts:
1. I'm not suggesting click fraud, far from it. Just as you're more likely to go to a restaurant that advertised in a magazine you like, you're more likely to click on an ad that lives on a relevant page you liked. Click fraud is a whole different game (primarily because the clicker benefits).
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The predictable lifecycle of the skeptic (or even better, cynic)
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Wed, 20 Aug. 2008
The Kindle is a lousy idea. No one will read a book that way.
The Kindle is late. Amazon has no clue how to launch a product.
The Kindle is poorly designed. See, we told you.
The Kindle's pricing model hurts book publishers. It will never be adopted by them.
The Kindle is pretty cool. Non-techies like it.
The Kindle is sold out. Amazon doesn't k
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Like your hair is on fire
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sun, 17 Aug. 2008
In the US, the next two weeks are traditionally the slowest of the year. Plenty of vacations, half-day Fridays, casual Mondays, martini Tuesdays... you get the idea.
What if you and your team went against type? What if you spend the two weeks while your competition (and the forces for the status quo) are snoozing--and turn it into a completed project?
So, here's the cha
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Policies, biases and conflicts
Seth Godin via Seth's Blog on Sat, 16 Aug. 2008
I don't take advertising on this site. I never have, I don't intend to.
If there's a link on this site, it's because I thought it was a good idea. I don't get paid to include links. I write about stuff I like, stuff you might like and people that I like.
The only affiliate program I belong to is Amazon. All my proceeds go to charity.
I don't take PR pitches. If you
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