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Seth Godin

Agenda setting

by nick on October 30, 2011

Seth wrote recently about ceding one’s responsibility via other people’s agendas. He said ‘Setting an agenda is often as important as checking the boxes,’ and I completely agree.

Setting an agenda for a meeting gives you the initial power. Obviously, it allows you to frame the context of the discussions. You might not win every position but you certainly get to discuss them if you’ve put them on the agenda.

Also, if a structured agenda’s gone out beforehand and no one had any amendments prior to sitting down, then you’d be in your rights to say, ‘Sorry, I don’t believe that’s on the agenda. We can schedule it in for next time, though,’ if something new comes up. This can be a great tactic to avoid a tricky area or just simply to keep the stupid stuff off the table.

Definitely avoid the ‘any other business’ pitfall, too. It’s the catchall that lets any number of elephants into the room.

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Three books to kick you

by nick on March 13, 2011

Do you like business books that inspire you to move into action, or books that break down what someone did in their business? If it’s the former then this month has seen a couple of excellent releases for you:

Gary Vaynerchuk is a hustler. His second book, The Thank You Economy is out this week. Gary took his father’s wine store turnover from $4m to $69m inside 5 years. He hustled. He expanded. He served. He innovated. He grew. He succeeded. This guy is someone you should hook into.

Seth Godin has released a short 70-odd page book called, Poke The Box. It’s about starting things, kicking off and shipping. Like so many of his short pieces he’s asking you to DO something.

A third beauty that I haven’t got ‘round to yet is Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination from Hugh MacLeod. It’s also his second release and another offering insight into an Internet and marketing powerhouse.

Enjoy (and then DO something).

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Retailing depth

by nick on November 21, 2010

Seth would say there’s a dilemma when wanting to grow your customer base of going deeper or wider with your product offering. Victor Churchill in Melbourne is a fabulously extravagant example of going deeper.

They’re in the meat business but they’re anything other than a simple a butcher’s shop. This store takes things to an extreme, adding plenty of marketing sizzle to help the business stand apart.

Merchandising – the act and skill of butchery is part of the merchandising in store with the team working at timber butcher’s blocks on stage behind floor-to-ceiling glass. It’s practical and visually arresting.

Hero product – the daily special is on a pedestal inside a glass dome with over a dozen security cameras trained on it.

Depth of range – they’ve specialty cuts of meat and carcasses. These are hanging from a custom-designed, revolving, metal chain rack.

Story telling – the number one thing the father and son owners want you to notice is the backdrop brick wall made of Himalayan rock salt. Apparently, it infuses the hanging meat with flavour and sterilises the air!

Specialist service – could you receive anything less from these guys?

The best consumer-facing businesses are authentic; they have stories and a personality. Have you got a better example of that than Victor Churchill?

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Defending social media attacks

by nick on April 28, 2010

Nestle are used to their fair share of bad press; students the world over have seen to that. But March 2010 is when they will go into social media case study history.

For anyone who’s not read the full saga, here’s the short version: a video was staged which drew a play on eating Kit-Kat and orangutans’ fingers. Nestle had the video taken down but, of course, it reappeared. They chased it around the ‘net like a drunk trying to bath a cat and made life pretty miserable for themselves by fumbling over logo violations when Greenpeace were organised.

I’m struggling here between ethics and communication tactics. If you make a bad product – deem that as you will – then, with or without a great web interaction, you deserve to be called on it. But, lets assume you aren’t evil personified and you deserve your place in the world of commerce, what do you do when attacked online?

Despite what some experts portray, social media isn’t always a simple mirror, signal, manoeuvre affair. On top of the immense variables, there is the fear of inflaming situations, adding sugar to the fermenting jar that forums and blog comments can become. I don’t believe there is a definitive three, five or ten-point plan. Social media has only one absolute for all organisations: listening. If it’s nothing else for you, it’s an opportunity to listen.

That said, Seth Godin believes he’s got an answer: brands in public. He launched this aggregator back in September last year.

Strangely for a Godin fanboy I wasn’t convinced at launch. And after six months or so I can’t say I’m overly impressed with their client list – no Coke, no Cisco, no Microsoft, all of whom are being critiqued hugely online. If anything, is this not a $400/month garden where a bad ‘vibe’ can grow? From a brand manager’s standpoint, doesn’t she prefer any negatives to be disparate across the web, rather than collate neatly in one screenshot? Of course, the positives mentioned online will also look more powerful together.

Which brings us right back to our variables problem: join in and risk inflaming the situation or enter and solve problems with a swath of your service sword? The trouble is unless the Nestles of the world truly engage (as in adopt some of their philosophies, ecological or otherwise) with the likes of Greenpeace, they’re likely to find hugging a tree has morphed into overtaking a Facebook wall as the militant tool of choice.

But don’t be frozen by fear. The wonderful John Battelle at Federated Media recently wrote, “…all of our customers are already operating in social media. You can’t pretend otherwise. And it’s better to engage, make mistakes, admit those mistakes, and move on, than to not engage at all. I call this “conversational judo,” and suggest we all practice it, daily. Twice on Sunday, perhaps….”

Touché.

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Packaging sell out

by nick on February 15, 2010

The cigarette brand Windsor Blue is modernising their packaging. They’re “now the number one choice for above king size length adult smokers downtrading into the economy priced cigarette sector. The new pack design will build on this success,” says Rachel Smith, brand manager.

Compare this to the comments Seth had for Madecasse chocolate and their packaging of ethical African chocolate.

Both products demand a growth in sales to justify the cost of the design and reprinting. Given that cigarette and chocolate sales have proven buoyant in times of recession, which design gig would you rather boot up Photoshop for?

At first look ethical farming versus death is a no-brainer. Yet perversely, imagine how seriously you’d take the flair of the girl who lifted Windsor’s sales by another 15 points thanks to a redesign.

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Seth’s new ebook

by nick on December 14, 2009

At their best, blogs offer insight and intelligence, none moreso than Seth Godin’s daily brain dumps. Seth goes futher than most in that he often throws out free business ideas and free ebooks.

I’ve not had a chance to digest all of his latest offering but it looks similar to his usual fare: short, digestable, direct and thought provoking. Even better is the fact he got 70 odd important people to contribute “important ideas… including Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried…”

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Web breaks 80-20 rule

by nick on October 14, 2009

Chris AndersonThe preeminent Seth Godin commented on a Charles Blow report in the NY Times, pointing out that the internet’s low barrier of entry had led to the markets flooding. He said, “If you can’t sell to 1 in 1000, why market to a million?”

The numbers from Blow’s piece were, “…of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.”

This tells us the long tail of the Web makes Pareto’s 80-20 principle defunct. (Perhaps poor salespeople might stop overly quoting it?) The Amazons and the Play.coms of the world are now playing to different laws.

Wouldn’t you just love to get your hands on their analytics to see it with your own eyes?

Photo: Chris Anderson (from Wikipedia), who coined the phrase Long Tail in his Wired magazine article October 2004

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Here comes Seth

by nick on February 15, 2009

Seth Godin is giving his only UK talk on Tuesday. Yep, yours truly has booked a day off and got a ticket to the Big Smoke to see my man Seth.

He’s not a ground-breaking intellectual – academia would never cite him like they do Philip Kotler et al (and we wouldn’t read him either). But he’s superb at taking ideas and formatting them into cohesive thoughts that spread via his stories. He is a visionary and he’s dialled into leveraging the web 100%.

He’s most captivating because his ideas are top-notch and he shares absolutely loads of them. This, coupled with his style and honesty, make him unmissable.

My wife thinks I’ll meet him in the corridor. She also reckons I’ll dribble and soil myself at the mere presence of a [my] marketing god. Let’s hope she’s 50% right.

Teaser video of Seth at Google:
[google -6909078385965257294]

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First reserve

by nick on January 22, 2009

sethgodin-in-londonObama was thought to be too busy, so they sent the next best thing.

Seth Godin is coming to London. Book yourself on his first UK talk. Quick.

Seth’s in London!

Yes, London, UK.

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Reasons to read

by nick on September 26, 2008

The main man, Tom Peters points us to the FT for a reading assignment with “wall-to-wall great material about the financial markets madness”.

All very well and apt, but get over to my even-more-main-man, Seth Godin for a quick fix of inspiration. As ever he’s got an upbeat take on things for the entrepreneur.
[Don’t you think that if Obama had put Godin on the ticket as VP, McCain wouldn’t stand a chance? Or should it be Godin for President?]

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Start at the beginning

by nick on September 13, 2008

Collective wisdom has it that SMEs don’t plan. If they do it’s likely to be more back-of-the-napkin stuff; or perhaps it’s all kept in the grey matter. Even then it’s unlikely that the boss will actually have told anybody and ‘created a vision’.

But large companies often don’t either. Some have large teams dedicated to planning and you’ve got to ask how accurate they’ve been at forecasting their future (think RBS losses for example). Studying for my MBA in 2004 we looked at the over-50s business, Saga, whose pre-tax profits where £48 million at the time. I was certainly surprised that they claimed not to possess a ten, five, three or even a one year plan.

Although a 15,000-word document may have not existed, a vision for their future and a strong company ethos certainly did. Backed by private equity firm Charterhouse, a MBO buyout from the founding de Haan family valued at £1.35 billion went through soon afterward.

Of course, there’s a contradiction to this. It would be easy for start-ups to fall into planning paralysis, stuck in the drawing of a plan and never actually launching into work. Some banks – even seed investors – may initiate the problem and there will be plenty of ‘experts’ who’ll ask for the Business Plan in a low and officious voice. Something is needed then, but what?

As ever, [His Highness] Seth Godin says it more succinctly than anyone:

…do your best to pick a direction (hopefully an unusual one, hopefully one you have resources to complete, hopefully one you can do authentically and hopefully one you enjoy) and then do it. Loudly. With patience and passion. (Loud doesn’t mean boorish. Loud means proud and joyful and with confidence.)
No flitting, no waiting for proof. Just consistent, overwhelming performance in pursuit of a vision you believe in. That’s far more important than which direction you chose in the first place…

Heading off aimlessly on your own (even with your 800 employees) is like building a skyscraper without the architect’s drawings – destined to fail. Pick that direction and tell your stakeholders, every one of them. Tune your message as clear as words allow. Repeat your ‘clear’ message often. Tell them again in a month, and again in another. Clear and often. And so on.

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