Mass marketers are in a race to the bottom, warns Seth Godin
Marketers must learn to “shun the non-believers” and only focus on the “people at the edges” who will be prepared to listen and engage with your product, marketing guru Seth Godin told a Sydney audience this morning.
Godin, widely hailed as a marketing visionary with 17 books to his name, encouraged businesses to look beyond the normal and create products that are “remarkable”. Selling to what he described as “weird” members of society – those who have particular desires, needs and interests – works far better than targeting “normal” people or the masses, he said.
In a keynote address this morning to Business Chicks members, New York-based Godin said mass marketers selling commoditised product face mounting challenges.
“The challenge in marketing a commodity is that you are in a race to the bottom, and the problem with a race to the bottom is that you might win. Even worse you might come in second,” he said. “If you are a mass marketer your goal is to make something that normal people want to buy. The problem is that normal people are ignoring you because they have chosen to be normal and what it means to be normal is that they are able to ignore you.
“They don’t have a problem, or they don’t think they have a problem, so you have no chance because they are not listening.”
Godin said the focus should be on marketing products that people are going to talk about, and which target what he referred to as “weird” people with particular tastes and interest. The aim should be to “change people”, he said, citing Apple as an example of a company which has altered people’s view of technology.
“You need to be able to answer the question: what change are you trying to make? Every successful organisation is successful because they are changing people.
“When Apple launch a new product they keep raising the bar, they have changed what we expect from digital goods and once you get hooked in that cycle they have got your forever. We need to say ‘who do we want to change, how do we want them to change and once they changed what will they tell their friends’.
“Choose to make something that people are going to talk about. What the word remarkable means is really simple – it’s something worth making a remark about. If people talk about it, it’s remarkable by definition because they are telling other people.”
He said too many companies get sucked in to marketing too widely, adding that companies must learn to target their audience. “Why aren’t you dating your prospects? The only asset being built on the internet is connection. We live in a connection economy, not an industrial economy.
“What we should be saying is that we are going to make stuff for people who get us. We have to shun the non believers and say it’s not for you. Thanks for your concern and your criticism, but it’s not for you.”
Steve Jones
Apple sells mass marketing products, Seth, albeit very good ones with very good branding. Is he seriously suggesting abandoning the vast majority of consumers and their needs and instead catering to fringe audiences? Because that sure ain’t what Apple does. This is seriously retarded logic.
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Seth Godin is one seriously overrated dude. More wishy-washy advice than his is difficult to find.
These “gurus” should be forced to come up with at least ten specific examples or case studies that we haven’t heard of. Just citing Apple is a massive copout, plus, as @Circling sharks points out, his analysis is deeply flawed.
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^ What MD said.
Godin has been saying that TV is dying and advertising is dying for almost 20 years.
Next!
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To be previous two death magnet comments, exactly what is wrong with the logic?
‘who do we want to change, how do we want them to change and once they changed what will they tell their friends’ seems pretty spot on to me.
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I’ll back Prof. Byron Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” against any or all of Seth Godin’s 17 books.
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I was a bit cynical at first, but Seth’s talk was great – the Apple example could have been better explained here. In his talk he was referring to how Apple introduced non-tech people to a tech-heavy industry, targeting the people on the fringes, as opposed to the tech masses. And changed behaviours and redefined the mass market in the process.
Aiming for the fringes is exactly what many marketers are doing every day. Marketing to masses will not work in a lot of cases, cut-through is impossible, and many of us don’t have the budgets. ‘Targeting the fringes’ was his spin on target or niche marketing – figuring out who will listen, and work out the best way to communicate with them. Pretty logical really.
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@John Grono.. What you said. Sharpe is the man
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17 books! It’s quality and not quantity.This man writes and speaks in platitudes.
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Not saying Godin is right, or wrong, but we all need to get over our biases that any solution is the ‘right’ way to go.
Right now, there are no right answers in marketing or advertising. This is only going to become more prevalent and we are going to have to evolve, there is no doubting that.
Maybe mass marketing is still the future, I don’t believe it is, for many reasons. But I am certainly less closed to it now in the overall mix than I have ever been, from listening to smart people, like Mr Donald above and getting over my own biases.
‘Permission marketing’ by this bald dude, it’s probably the most sense and most actionable thing he has written and the one ‘theory’ that is starting to become truer every day. Our biggest threat is that the watcher, walker, listener, humans takes ultimate control and just switches us all off for good.
PS. I think if you actually look at the TV networks, production companies and the future. TV died a while ago in it’s current format. Not advertising based, the whole concept and business model. The data now adds up.
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When gurus like Seth Godin talk about “fringe” and “weird” and “remarkable” and “talk to their friends” i try to apply it to a product like washing powder, and all the other low involvement categories that make the cash registers hum every day…..and i don’t see the fit.
It’s this sort of one size fits all logic using an outlier like Apple as the benchmark that has every idiot in our industry running around talking about engagement and conversations in completely inappropriate and irrelevant categories.
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Anyone that calls themselves a guru, invariably, isn’t one.
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@Rob – I couldn’t agree more. 99% of brands aren’t technological giants for whom these examples are remotely relevant. Problem is they behave as if they are.
@Michael – you chosen sentence has noting to do with logic, it’s just a motherhood statement that adds nothing of value
@JC – I’m sure he happens to make a good point every now and then. It’s just something about the arrogance and air of superiority that seems to surround certain gurus that really annoys me
Perhaps Seth Godin should use Seth Godin as an example, cause he’s certainly done a good job branding himself. He is to marketing what Andrea Bocelli and Andre Rieu is for classical music – a safe choice for those who wants a bit of credibility but really has no clue about the topic
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I see a lot of unguided words to many of these posts. First of all, Apple doesn’t market to “everyone”. If that were the case Apple iphones and laptops would be a lot more economic here in Peru and Latin America (meaning that they don’t target foreign countries). On top of it all, Seth’s example was that Apple’s products are changing people. It had nothing to do with how they market. Anyone saying that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about obviously hasn’t read any of his 17 books, free ebooks, blog posts, or listened to his podcasts. I absolutely love all of them and receive a lot of knowledgeable information about business and marketing.
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@Eric I agree that Seth Godin is a smart guy, i have read a lot of his stuff and he has created an impressive body of work and theories.
My big problem is that the headline ideas such as those above are dangerous in the hands of unsophisticated marketers who don’t understand nuance and relevance in the application of the thinking.
So you end up with a lot of plonkers talking about Apple and the other usual suspects in relation to completely irrelevant industries and businesses that actually have other, bigger problems to solve than trying to be “remarkable” or “focusing on people at the edges”.
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