Download change. - Dudnyk

DUDNYK: When you look into the future of ad agencies, what do you see?
DUDNYK: What’s next for you and the brand?
SETH: I think the ad agency of the future will do two things.
SETH: In terms of my writing, it’s really for me becoming more and more
about the blog. A book takes a year and it reaches fewer people than my
blog does every day. So it seems to me that I’m finding myself just putting
my best riffs online and not in a hurry to write a great new tome.
#1. It gets involved on the first day of new product planning. The ad agency
ought to have a loud voice in what products get developed and in what widgets
get built because that’s marketing.
And #2, the ad agency is better qualified to grasp big pieces of the marketing
function than to just come up with clever execution. So that means that the
marketing person needs to go to the agency and say: Okay my goal is to have a
million people in our permission base who want to hear from us every week so I
can teach them how to do…
So how do we start at the beginning and build a product and an offer that leads
us to a million people who want to hear from us?
It doesn’t happen that way. What usually happens is that the product and the
offer are all done and the company says, well, we need this typeset, we need
this designed, we need a photo done. And the ad agencies’ hands are tied.
january 2007
My new project is called Squidoo. [This is Seth Godin’s ebook and can be
accessed at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_next_
free_e.html] I did it for two reasons. One, because I wanted to help a lot
of people have a platform where they could leverage what they know. It
started in December [2005], and we now have 13,000 people signed up
and 25,000 pages built. So it’s going much faster than we ever expected.
And the other reason is, I want to raise $100 million for charity. I want to
make it easy for these people to pick whatever charity they want. Because
I’m just stunned by—even though we’re the most generous nation in the
world—what a tiny percentage of money Americans give to non-church/
non-synagogue causes. And if I can help spread that story, and help create
leverage to where people do that, I want to do that.
Where Plane A, “relevance,”meets Plane B, “marketing.”
When I first read Purple Cow, I thought that Seth Godin, the quintessential marketer, would be a perfect candidate
for an issue of ASPECT. I knew that our audience would enjoy the insight into his views on advertising and in
particular, pharma marketing. I encourage everyone to visit Seth’s blog as he is constantly riffing on new ideas
and spurring innovation.
I hope you enjoyed this issue of ASPECT. If you have comments or a story to share, I would appreciate hearing
from you. Please feel free to contact me directly at 267-532-1060 or via e-mail at [email protected].
Frank X. Powers, Executive Vice President
[email protected]
The Bear, Executive Retriever
In this issue:
an interview with
Seth Godin
100 Tournament Drive, Horsham, PA 19044 (215) 443-9406
ASPECT examines the viewpoints of an eclectic mix of notable people in the search for truth, wisdom, and some surprising marketing insights.
Sponsored by Dudnyk.
Photographs by Jeff Sacks Productions, Inc.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
issue seven
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers aro
Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com
Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune
Best Business Book, and it spent four
months on the Business Week bestseller
list. It also appeared on The New York
Times business book bestseller list.
Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever written.
More than 1,000,000 people downloaded the digital version of this
book about how ideas spread. Featured in USA Today, The New York
Times, The Industry Standard and Wired Online, Ideavirus hit #4 on
the Amazon Japan bestseller list, and #5 in the USA. The Big Red
Fez, Godin’s take on web design, was the #1 ebook (worldwide) on
Amazon for almost a year before it was published in paperback in
2002. The Miami Herald called it one of the best business books of the
year. Survival is Not Enough has made bestseller lists in Germany,
the UK and the United States. With a foreword by Charles Darwin,
this breakthrough book redefines what change means to anyone who
works for a living. Tom Peters called it “a landmark.” The book was
first excerpted in Fast Company, where Godin is a contributing editor.
Purple Cow was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.
It’s all about how companies can transform themselves by becoming
remarkable. Free Prize Inside was an Amazon Top 50 bestseller and
a New York Times business bestseller. It describes how every single
person in your organization is in the marketing department... and
shows you how to make something happen. Just out, All Marketers
are Liars has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired
its own blog. Find out more at www.allmarketersareliars.com.
Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one
of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and
is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences
he addresses. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s
leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in
late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate
Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.
DUDNYK: When you look into the future of ad agencies, what do you see?
DUDNYK: What’s next for you and the brand?
SETH: I think the ad agency of the future will do two things.
SETH: In terms of my writing, it’s really for me becoming more and more
about the blog. A book takes a year and it reaches fewer people than my
blog does every day. So it seems to me that I’m finding myself just putting
my best riffs online and not in a hurry to write a great new tome.
#1. It gets involved on the first day of new product planning. The ad agency
ought to have a loud voice in what products get developed and in what widgets
get built because that’s marketing.
And #2, the ad agency is better qualified to grasp big pieces of the marketing
function than to just come up with clever execution. So that means that the
marketing person needs to go to the agency and say: Okay my goal is to have a
million people in our permission base who want to hear from us every week so I
can teach them how to do…
So how do we start at the beginning and build a product and an offer that leads
us to a million people who want to hear from us?
It doesn’t happen that way. What usually happens is that the product and the
offer are all done and the company says, well, we need this typeset, we need
this designed, we need a photo done. And the ad agencies’ hands are tied.
january 2007
My new project is called Squidoo. [This is Seth Godin’s ebook and can be
accessed at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_next_
free_e.html] I did it for two reasons. One, because I wanted to help a lot
of people have a platform where they could leverage what they know. It
started in December [2005], and we now have 13,000 people signed up
and 25,000 pages built. So it’s going much faster than we ever expected.
And the other reason is, I want to raise $100 million for charity. I want to
make it easy for these people to pick whatever charity they want. Because
I’m just stunned by—even though we’re the most generous nation in the
world—what a tiny percentage of money Americans give to non-church/
non-synagogue causes. And if I can help spread that story, and help create
leverage to where people do that, I want to do that.
Where Plane A, “relevance,”meets Plane B, “marketing.”
When I first read Purple Cow, I thought that Seth Godin, the quintessential marketer, would be a perfect candidate
for an issue of ASPECT. I knew that our audience would enjoy the insight into his views on advertising and in
particular, pharma marketing. I encourage everyone to visit Seth’s blog as he is constantly riffing on new ideas
and spurring innovation.
I hope you enjoyed this issue of ASPECT. If you have comments or a story to share, I would appreciate hearing
from you. Please feel free to contact me directly at 267-532-1060 or via e-mail at [email protected].
Frank X. Powers, Executive Vice President
[email protected]
The Bear, Executive Retriever
In this issue:
an interview with
Seth Godin
100 Tournament Drive, Horsham, PA 19044 (215) 443-9406
ASPECT examines the viewpoints of an eclectic mix of notable people in the search for truth, wisdom, and some surprising marketing insights.
Sponsored by Dudnyk.
Photographs by Jeff Sacks Productions, Inc.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
issue seven
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers aro
Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com
Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune
Best Business Book, and it spent four
months on the Business Week bestseller
list. It also appeared on The New York
Times business book bestseller list.
Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever written.
More than 1,000,000 people downloaded the digital version of this
book about how ideas spread. Featured in USA Today, The New York
Times, The Industry Standard and Wired Online, Ideavirus hit #4 on
the Amazon Japan bestseller list, and #5 in the USA. The Big Red
Fez, Godin’s take on web design, was the #1 ebook (worldwide) on
Amazon for almost a year before it was published in paperback in
2002. The Miami Herald called it one of the best business books of the
year. Survival is Not Enough has made bestseller lists in Germany,
the UK and the United States. With a foreword by Charles Darwin,
this breakthrough book redefines what change means to anyone who
works for a living. Tom Peters called it “a landmark.” The book was
first excerpted in Fast Company, where Godin is a contributing editor.
Purple Cow was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.
It’s all about how companies can transform themselves by becoming
remarkable. Free Prize Inside was an Amazon Top 50 bestseller and
a New York Times business bestseller. It describes how every single
person in your organization is in the marketing department... and
shows you how to make something happen. Just out, All Marketers
are Liars has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired
its own blog. Find out more at www.allmarketersareliars.com.
Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one
of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and
is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences
he addresses. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s
leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in
late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate
Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers around the world &
changed the way people think about marketing, change & work.
You have been described as
“the marketer’s marketer.”
What makes you a good marketer in
today’s environment?
DUDNYK: How do you deal with your success?
DUDNYK: Starbucks . . .
SETH: I’m really glad you asked that. The reason it’s easy to do this is, this is who I am. So I don’t have
to ever have a meeting with myself and ask, “Would Seth Godin say this?” Because I just say it. And it’s
who I am. So the authenticity and the consistency come together.
SETH: Starbucks is a great example. Starbucks works. The coffee has to be
good enough. That’s not the issue. Most people who go to Starbucks couldn’t
tell the difference in a blind taste test. What matters are the couches and the
free Internet. The locations and the sounds inside the stores. That’s the story.
A story that makes us feel good. A story that’s worth $4 a cup!
SETH: I’m one of the few people who doesn’t say, “Here’s the 12-step
program to market your widget better.” Instead, I think about marketing.
I talk about what it is to be a marketer and how marketing is a fundamentally
different endeavor than it was 30 years ago.
SETH: Far and away, the #1 thing that people say to me is that they read Purple Cow or any of my other
books and they really get my idea of the new marketing. And then they say, “But my boss won’t let me.
What should I do?” And my answer is that it’s not that your boss won’t let you. It’s that you’re asking your
boss to take responsibility for something that you want to do.
And how did the story spread? Starbucks has never run advertising.
It spread because someone said to someone else, I’ll meet you at Starbucks.
“I’ll meet you at Starbucks” is the marketing program.
Instead what I say to people is this: start with smaller projects. Do a little bit and when it works,
people are going to run to do more. And the second thing is you can’t say to the boss, “I need you to be
responsible.” You have to say to the boss, “Can I have four hours a week to do something and whatever
happens, I’m going to be responsible?” And if you have a good track record, every boss is going to say yes
to that.
DUDNYK: I brought up Starbucks because it’s consistent with things
I picked up reading your material. Big isn’t better. Small is the new big.
DUDNYK: Was there an epiphany or a moment of clarity when you knew
the road you were going to travel?
SETH: When I was 15, I realized that I needed to run my own business. I ran
businesses in high school and I thought it was fun. While in college, I had 400
people working for the group I ran. At Spinnaker Software [first job after college]
I was really lucky because they let me act like I owned the company. I didn’t have
to worry about finances; I didn’t have to worry about raising money; I didn’t have
to worry about profits. My boss didn’t speak to me for a year—I mean, I was just
on my own. And so it was like having my own company without any of the hassle.
DUDNYK: In your books, you make a big deal about shaving your head.
Was it just by design?
SETH: I had an Internet company in 1996 that I was funding from my book
packaging company. I went out and raised $4 million to fund this company. Well,
at the same time, there were people in California raising $30 to $50 million to
fund their businesses. They were buying ads for a million dollars a month and I
had zero to spend on ads. That was my competition.
So my vice president of marketing and I decided I would be our ad. I shaved my
head and went on the speaker’s circuit and gave 500 speeches in three years.
And so it was an intentional branding effort on my part. I was the over-the-top,
bald, wise guy from New York. And it worked. And so I built a brand.
My head is the brand.
DUDNYK: What’s the question you’re most frequently asked?
DUDNYK: What’s the inspiration behind All Marketers Are Liars?
SETH: Well, the title’s wrong. All marketers aren’t really liars. All marketers are storytellers.
And it’s consumers who are the liars. They’re telling themselves the story that they want to believe.
I wrote this book because I was really angry about the way politicians and big corporations were telling
fraudulent stories that owners and consumers were buying into. That—the act of doing that—was not
only hurting our society, but it was totally eliminating any chance that others had to tell good stories,
stories that would matter, stories that would spread, stories that would stand the test of time.
SETH: Yeah, and here’s the challenge: how does JetBlue treat you in a way
that makes you feel completely different than US Airways does? It’s not because
JetBlue has fewer employees. There’s no connection. It’s because the
marketing department’s in charge of training at JetBlue. It’s because JetBlue
hires nice people and teaches them how to be flight attendants and does
not hire flight attendants and teach them how to be nice.
It’s a mind set from the top down that says we’re going to act like the
airline is one plane. The pilot, his job, includes acting like an owner of the airline.
At US Airways it’s opposite.
DUDNYK: What would you say to pharma marketers?
And so in the book, I give you the example of the SUV. For 15 years, Ford Motor Company told us that
SUVs were patriotic, reliable, and safe. A good way to take care of your family. And then we discovered:
A. They aren’t as safe as minivans. B. They don’t get as good gas mileage as minivans. When people
discovered that they’d been defrauded, sales slipped, and Ford had to lay off 20,000 workers because
the story wasn’t true. The story wasn’t authentic.
SETH: I’d say don’t try to come up with a brainstorm that changes everything.
Instead, try to come up with a description of what the edge is . . . the scariest
ad . . . the most coveted toy . . . the package that’s hardest to open . . . that’s
easiest to open. Put that thought on the table, and lots of people you work
with will gradually improve what you did. Everyone’s good at one-upmanship.
And so I think the future is for marketers to realize they’re in the storytelling business. It’s packaging, the
way you talk about it—the story. A person’s buying that story. It makes them FEEL GOOD to pay $3 a can
for cat food. …like you’re doing something good for your cat! And then, if these stories spread, that’s
marketing. That’s what we do for a living. We craft stories and give them the opportunity to spread.
Like the Korean restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan that decided to remain
open 24 hours a day. They went all the way to the edge. And by going all the
way to the edge, it does more business than all the other Korean restaurants put
together. It’s that simple. It’s about finding an edge and going all the way to it.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers around the world &
changed the way people think about marketing, change & work.
You have been described as
“the marketer’s marketer.”
What makes you a good marketer in
today’s environment?
DUDNYK: How do you deal with your success?
DUDNYK: Starbucks . . .
SETH: I’m really glad you asked that. The reason it’s easy to do this is, this is who I am. So I don’t have
to ever have a meeting with myself and ask, “Would Seth Godin say this?” Because I just say it. And it’s
who I am. So the authenticity and the consistency come together.
SETH: Starbucks is a great example. Starbucks works. The coffee has to be
good enough. That’s not the issue. Most people who go to Starbucks couldn’t
tell the difference in a blind taste test. What matters are the couches and the
free Internet. The locations and the sounds inside the stores. That’s the story.
A story that makes us feel good. A story that’s worth $4 a cup!
SETH: I’m one of the few people who doesn’t say, “Here’s the 12-step
program to market your widget better.” Instead, I think about marketing.
I talk about what it is to be a marketer and how marketing is a fundamentally
different endeavor than it was 30 years ago.
SETH: Far and away, the #1 thing that people say to me is that they read Purple Cow or any of my other
books and they really get my idea of the new marketing. And then they say, “But my boss won’t let me.
What should I do?” And my answer is that it’s not that your boss won’t let you. It’s that you’re asking your
boss to take responsibility for something that you want to do.
And how did the story spread? Starbucks has never run advertising.
It spread because someone said to someone else, I’ll meet you at Starbucks.
“I’ll meet you at Starbucks” is the marketing program.
Instead what I say to people is this: start with smaller projects. Do a little bit and when it works,
people are going to run to do more. And the second thing is you can’t say to the boss, “I need you to be
responsible.” You have to say to the boss, “Can I have four hours a week to do something and whatever
happens, I’m going to be responsible?” And if you have a good track record, every boss is going to say yes
to that.
DUDNYK: I brought up Starbucks because it’s consistent with things
I picked up reading your material. Big isn’t better. Small is the new big.
DUDNYK: Was there an epiphany or a moment of clarity when you knew
the road you were going to travel?
SETH: When I was 15, I realized that I needed to run my own business. I ran
businesses in high school and I thought it was fun. While in college, I had 400
people working for the group I ran. At Spinnaker Software [first job after college]
I was really lucky because they let me act like I owned the company. I didn’t have
to worry about finances; I didn’t have to worry about raising money; I didn’t have
to worry about profits. My boss didn’t speak to me for a year—I mean, I was just
on my own. And so it was like having my own company without any of the hassle.
DUDNYK: In your books, you make a big deal about shaving your head.
Was it just by design?
SETH: I had an Internet company in 1996 that I was funding from my book
packaging company. I went out and raised $4 million to fund this company. Well,
at the same time, there were people in California raising $30 to $50 million to
fund their businesses. They were buying ads for a million dollars a month and I
had zero to spend on ads. That was my competition.
So my vice president of marketing and I decided I would be our ad. I shaved my
head and went on the speaker’s circuit and gave 500 speeches in three years.
And so it was an intentional branding effort on my part. I was the over-the-top,
bald, wise guy from New York. And it worked. And so I built a brand.
My head is the brand.
DUDNYK: What’s the question you’re most frequently asked?
DUDNYK: What’s the inspiration behind All Marketers Are Liars?
SETH: Well, the title’s wrong. All marketers aren’t really liars. All marketers are storytellers.
And it’s consumers who are the liars. They’re telling themselves the story that they want to believe.
I wrote this book because I was really angry about the way politicians and big corporations were telling
fraudulent stories that owners and consumers were buying into. That—the act of doing that—was not
only hurting our society, but it was totally eliminating any chance that others had to tell good stories,
stories that would matter, stories that would spread, stories that would stand the test of time.
SETH: Yeah, and here’s the challenge: how does JetBlue treat you in a way
that makes you feel completely different than US Airways does? It’s not because
JetBlue has fewer employees. There’s no connection. It’s because the
marketing department’s in charge of training at JetBlue. It’s because JetBlue
hires nice people and teaches them how to be flight attendants and does
not hire flight attendants and teach them how to be nice.
It’s a mind set from the top down that says we’re going to act like the
airline is one plane. The pilot, his job, includes acting like an owner of the airline.
At US Airways it’s opposite.
DUDNYK: What would you say to pharma marketers?
And so in the book, I give you the example of the SUV. For 15 years, Ford Motor Company told us that
SUVs were patriotic, reliable, and safe. A good way to take care of your family. And then we discovered:
A. They aren’t as safe as minivans. B. They don’t get as good gas mileage as minivans. When people
discovered that they’d been defrauded, sales slipped, and Ford had to lay off 20,000 workers because
the story wasn’t true. The story wasn’t authentic.
SETH: I’d say don’t try to come up with a brainstorm that changes everything.
Instead, try to come up with a description of what the edge is . . . the scariest
ad . . . the most coveted toy . . . the package that’s hardest to open . . . that’s
easiest to open. Put that thought on the table, and lots of people you work
with will gradually improve what you did. Everyone’s good at one-upmanship.
And so I think the future is for marketers to realize they’re in the storytelling business. It’s packaging, the
way you talk about it—the story. A person’s buying that story. It makes them FEEL GOOD to pay $3 a can
for cat food. …like you’re doing something good for your cat! And then, if these stories spread, that’s
marketing. That’s what we do for a living. We craft stories and give them the opportunity to spread.
Like the Korean restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan that decided to remain
open 24 hours a day. They went all the way to the edge. And by going all the
way to the edge, it does more business than all the other Korean restaurants put
together. It’s that simple. It’s about finding an edge and going all the way to it.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers around the world &
changed the way people think about marketing, change & work.
You have been described as
“the marketer’s marketer.”
What makes you a good marketer in
today’s environment?
DUDNYK: How do you deal with your success?
DUDNYK: Starbucks . . .
SETH: I’m really glad you asked that. The reason it’s easy to do this is, this is who I am. So I don’t have
to ever have a meeting with myself and ask, “Would Seth Godin say this?” Because I just say it. And it’s
who I am. So the authenticity and the consistency come together.
SETH: Starbucks is a great example. Starbucks works. The coffee has to be
good enough. That’s not the issue. Most people who go to Starbucks couldn’t
tell the difference in a blind taste test. What matters are the couches and the
free Internet. The locations and the sounds inside the stores. That’s the story.
A story that makes us feel good. A story that’s worth $4 a cup!
SETH: I’m one of the few people who doesn’t say, “Here’s the 12-step
program to market your widget better.” Instead, I think about marketing.
I talk about what it is to be a marketer and how marketing is a fundamentally
different endeavor than it was 30 years ago.
SETH: Far and away, the #1 thing that people say to me is that they read Purple Cow or any of my other
books and they really get my idea of the new marketing. And then they say, “But my boss won’t let me.
What should I do?” And my answer is that it’s not that your boss won’t let you. It’s that you’re asking your
boss to take responsibility for something that you want to do.
And how did the story spread? Starbucks has never run advertising.
It spread because someone said to someone else, I’ll meet you at Starbucks.
“I’ll meet you at Starbucks” is the marketing program.
Instead what I say to people is this: start with smaller projects. Do a little bit and when it works,
people are going to run to do more. And the second thing is you can’t say to the boss, “I need you to be
responsible.” You have to say to the boss, “Can I have four hours a week to do something and whatever
happens, I’m going to be responsible?” And if you have a good track record, every boss is going to say yes
to that.
DUDNYK: I brought up Starbucks because it’s consistent with things
I picked up reading your material. Big isn’t better. Small is the new big.
DUDNYK: Was there an epiphany or a moment of clarity when you knew
the road you were going to travel?
SETH: When I was 15, I realized that I needed to run my own business. I ran
businesses in high school and I thought it was fun. While in college, I had 400
people working for the group I ran. At Spinnaker Software [first job after college]
I was really lucky because they let me act like I owned the company. I didn’t have
to worry about finances; I didn’t have to worry about raising money; I didn’t have
to worry about profits. My boss didn’t speak to me for a year—I mean, I was just
on my own. And so it was like having my own company without any of the hassle.
DUDNYK: In your books, you make a big deal about shaving your head.
Was it just by design?
SETH: I had an Internet company in 1996 that I was funding from my book
packaging company. I went out and raised $4 million to fund this company. Well,
at the same time, there were people in California raising $30 to $50 million to
fund their businesses. They were buying ads for a million dollars a month and I
had zero to spend on ads. That was my competition.
So my vice president of marketing and I decided I would be our ad. I shaved my
head and went on the speaker’s circuit and gave 500 speeches in three years.
And so it was an intentional branding effort on my part. I was the over-the-top,
bald, wise guy from New York. And it worked. And so I built a brand.
My head is the brand.
DUDNYK: What’s the question you’re most frequently asked?
DUDNYK: What’s the inspiration behind All Marketers Are Liars?
SETH: Well, the title’s wrong. All marketers aren’t really liars. All marketers are storytellers.
And it’s consumers who are the liars. They’re telling themselves the story that they want to believe.
I wrote this book because I was really angry about the way politicians and big corporations were telling
fraudulent stories that owners and consumers were buying into. That—the act of doing that—was not
only hurting our society, but it was totally eliminating any chance that others had to tell good stories,
stories that would matter, stories that would spread, stories that would stand the test of time.
SETH: Yeah, and here’s the challenge: how does JetBlue treat you in a way
that makes you feel completely different than US Airways does? It’s not because
JetBlue has fewer employees. There’s no connection. It’s because the
marketing department’s in charge of training at JetBlue. It’s because JetBlue
hires nice people and teaches them how to be flight attendants and does
not hire flight attendants and teach them how to be nice.
It’s a mind set from the top down that says we’re going to act like the
airline is one plane. The pilot, his job, includes acting like an owner of the airline.
At US Airways it’s opposite.
DUDNYK: What would you say to pharma marketers?
And so in the book, I give you the example of the SUV. For 15 years, Ford Motor Company told us that
SUVs were patriotic, reliable, and safe. A good way to take care of your family. And then we discovered:
A. They aren’t as safe as minivans. B. They don’t get as good gas mileage as minivans. When people
discovered that they’d been defrauded, sales slipped, and Ford had to lay off 20,000 workers because
the story wasn’t true. The story wasn’t authentic.
SETH: I’d say don’t try to come up with a brainstorm that changes everything.
Instead, try to come up with a description of what the edge is . . . the scariest
ad . . . the most coveted toy . . . the package that’s hardest to open . . . that’s
easiest to open. Put that thought on the table, and lots of people you work
with will gradually improve what you did. Everyone’s good at one-upmanship.
And so I think the future is for marketers to realize they’re in the storytelling business. It’s packaging, the
way you talk about it—the story. A person’s buying that story. It makes them FEEL GOOD to pay $3 a can
for cat food. …like you’re doing something good for your cat! And then, if these stories spread, that’s
marketing. That’s what we do for a living. We craft stories and give them the opportunity to spread.
Like the Korean restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan that decided to remain
open 24 hours a day. They went all the way to the edge. And by going all the
way to the edge, it does more business than all the other Korean restaurants put
together. It’s that simple. It’s about finding an edge and going all the way to it.
DUDNYK: When you look into the future of ad agencies, what do you see?
DUDNYK: What’s next for you and the brand?
SETH: I think the ad agency of the future will do two things.
SETH: In terms of my writing, it’s really for me becoming more and more
about the blog. A book takes a year and it reaches fewer people than my
blog does every day. So it seems to me that I’m finding myself just putting
my best riffs online and not in a hurry to write a great new tome.
#1. It gets involved on the first day of new product planning. The ad agency
ought to have a loud voice in what products get developed and in what widgets
get built because that’s marketing.
And #2, the ad agency is better qualified to grasp big pieces of the marketing
function than to just come up with clever execution. So that means that the
marketing person needs to go to the agency and say: Okay my goal is to have a
million people in our permission base who want to hear from us every week so I
can teach them how to do…
So how do we start at the beginning and build a product and an offer that leads
us to a million people who want to hear from us?
It doesn’t happen that way. What usually happens is that the product and the
offer are all done and the company says, well, we need this typeset, we need
this designed, we need a photo done. And the ad agencies’ hands are tied.
january 2007
My new project is called Squidoo. [This is Seth Godin’s ebook and can be
accessed at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_next_
free_e.html] I did it for two reasons. One, because I wanted to help a lot
of people have a platform where they could leverage what they know. It
started in December [2005], and we now have 13,000 people signed up
and 25,000 pages built. So it’s going much faster than we ever expected.
And the other reason is, I want to raise $100 million for charity. I want to
make it easy for these people to pick whatever charity they want. Because
I’m just stunned by—even though we’re the most generous nation in the
world—what a tiny percentage of money Americans give to non-church/
non-synagogue causes. And if I can help spread that story, and help create
leverage to where people do that, I want to do that.
Where Plane A, “relevance,”meets Plane B, “marketing.”
When I first read Purple Cow, I thought that Seth Godin, the quintessential marketer, would be a perfect candidate
for an issue of ASPECT. I knew that our audience would enjoy the insight into his views on advertising and in
particular, pharma marketing. I encourage everyone to visit Seth’s blog as he is constantly riffing on new ideas
and spurring innovation.
I hope you enjoyed this issue of ASPECT. If you have comments or a story to share, I would appreciate hearing
from you. Please feel free to contact me directly at 267-532-1060 or via e-mail at [email protected].
Frank X. Powers, Executive Vice President
[email protected]
The Bear, Executive Retriever
In this issue:
an interview with
Seth Godin
100 Tournament Drive, Horsham, PA 19044 (215) 443-9406
ASPECT examines the viewpoints of an eclectic mix of notable people in the search for truth, wisdom, and some surprising marketing insights.
Sponsored by Dudnyk.
Photographs by Jeff Sacks Productions, Inc.
bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change.
issue seven
Godin is author of seven books that have been bestsellers aro
Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com
Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune
Best Business Book, and it spent four
months on the Business Week bestseller
list. It also appeared on The New York
Times business book bestseller list.
Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever written.
More than 1,000,000 people downloaded the digital version of this
book about how ideas spread. Featured in USA Today, The New York
Times, The Industry Standard and Wired Online, Ideavirus hit #4 on
the Amazon Japan bestseller list, and #5 in the USA. The Big Red
Fez, Godin’s take on web design, was the #1 ebook (worldwide) on
Amazon for almost a year before it was published in paperback in
2002. The Miami Herald called it one of the best business books of the
year. Survival is Not Enough has made bestseller lists in Germany,
the UK and the United States. With a foreword by Charles Darwin,
this breakthrough book redefines what change means to anyone who
works for a living. Tom Peters called it “a landmark.” The book was
first excerpted in Fast Company, where Godin is a contributing editor.
Purple Cow was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.
It’s all about how companies can transform themselves by becoming
remarkable. Free Prize Inside was an Amazon Top 50 bestseller and
a New York Times business bestseller. It describes how every single
person in your organization is in the marketing department... and
shows you how to make something happen. Just out, All Marketers
are Liars has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired
its own blog. Find out more at www.allmarketersareliars.com.
Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one
of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and
is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences
he addresses. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s
leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in
late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate
Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.