hi I'm Seth Godin I'm the founder of the alt NBA and the author of a book called
this is marketing so some people will tell you that the way to make your ideas
spread is to come up with just the right Twitter strategy and put just the right
little icon on the page and optimize for posting on Tuesday afternoons and all
that stuff not the way you make your idea spread is you make an idea worth
spreading it seemed super simple but it's worth
doing so if we think about you know sigh the most viral video for the 10 years
doing the Gangnam style dance he wasn't a brilliant social media maven he just
made the right video for the right people in the right way on the right day
he made something people wanted to talk about so when we think back to the fax
machine the fax machine worked because you can't send a fax to yourself that if
you need a fax machine you need other people to have one too so you can send
them a fax so you told them about the fax machine it works better if I talk
about same with Tom's shoes TOMS shoes work better if I talk about them it's
really interesting if you think about a university like Tufts the back window
you get a sticker what's the sticker for exactly the sticker is college is better
if you're sending your kids to college if you can talk about it and so built
into the culture of our fabric if you look at lots of different industries is
is it better if you talk about there's a company that makes caps love your melon
and their idea is that they can put these hats into the world in a way that
raises money for kids with kids well that's a great cause but lots of
people have a great cause what's the difference the difference is you're not
buying a cap who already have account your head is not cold why did you buy
this you bought it so you could tell other people about
what it was when it's sitting on your head right next to your face and there's
that big square on a people what's that and you get to say I'm a better person
than you because I bought this cap you should buy one too so we gave people
something to talk about but you must begin with the product not
with the gimmick so here's a big idea which is it is impossible to be an
effective marketer without practical empathy so what is practical empathy
it's not oh I feel bad for you practical empathy is I don't know what
you know I don't want what you want I don't believe what you believe and
that's okay if you can't say and that's okay then you can't make any connection
but if you can then you can save yourself but if you learned what I want
to teach maybe you'd get happier because then you could start engaging
so now I'm a teacher and you're enrolled in what I'm teaching because I have
empathy for where you started and so those steps have to happen we're not in
charge that in the old days when there were three TV networks you could buy an
add-on awfully at the same time you were in charge not anymore it is entirely
possible that advertising will help what you do and there are two kinds of
advertising brand advertising and direct response direct response was tiny direct
marketing tiny when I came up you know the ads in the back of a magazine 800
numbers that was it but Facebook Google those are direct response media you can
measure them direct marketing is measured marketing brand marketing on
the other hand is unmeasured and that's okay if you're trying to sell a brand of
vodka cuz no one clicks on an ad and gets vodka deliver to them that's not
how bad can works what happens instead is drip by drip no pun intended you
learn to have more steam for this brand of vodka so when we think about for
example podcasts it's a mistake to sponsor a podcast and have the host read
out and visit blah blah blah slash whatever as if you're going to track it
you're listening in their car they're listening while they're jogging it's not
gonna work but a sponsorship can work great because it can raise my esteem for
the brand so if you have the money and the patient's advertising campaign off
if you are specific and if you are one of the few people few organizations that
can profit from direct response advertising go do it because every ad
pays for itself by infinity but that's rare it's not the normal well what we're
saying to people when we show up as a marketer is I will change
and what we mean by that is if you're the kind of person that wants this and
you're the kind of person that believes that my thing my service my product will
get you so we have to be very specific about the who if you're the kind of
person that wants this if you're the kind of person that believes this so so
many examples I can give you if you're the kind of person that loves old movie
musicals and would really like a night out here that kind of person are showing
on Saturday night of The Wizard of Oz outdoors in the park will make you feel
like you're part of something that's a marketing promise
that's not send an email to everyone saying wanna come to see the Wizard of
Oz totally different ways of talking to people the right people about the right
thing and the mistake we make is we get inconsistent we say we're talking to
these people but we make something that these people would prefer and when
they're not in alignment it doesn't hi it's Seth Godin and I'm here on the
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