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The second day of the conference kicked off with a KeyNote: Charlie Rose interviews Seth Godin
CR: where are we now? in terms of the relationship btw the web and advertising
SG: look at the future. in 10 yrs, we will say 2007 is the year it changed. we built real platforms that enabled the great companies to thrive and be built on. we do not have to argue about..access…acceptance…time online. we know that if you take ads from old space and slap on new space they will not work..you need an org that works with the medium..the winners are those that are building orgs that thrive in this environment
CR: an example?
SG: google, facebook, myspace, ebay. time spent is to connect people to people, people to ideas, people to product. in the ad space, it’s folk that are doing the permission space, relevant ads that reach the people who are looking, Ad blocker is causing an issue..it works. The ads were gone…you click and you never see ads. you only see, click, on ads you want to see. the ad community are starting to figure..right ad, right place, right place, I’ll act. I’ll send money. all commercials are like that – do not hold people hostage, create an environ where people want to react
CR: what ads work?
SG: 2 yrs ago at an airport there was nothing to do. There was a starbucks…I did not really drink coffee but at that point I bought a coffee, with everything. I decided I wanted to buy an expresso machine. I went to google. I researched….20 links later I know enough to buy a machine. Google made 20-30 bucks from my clicking, from searching…everyone of those ads were perfect..I was ready to read ads at that time. Now you could come up with the best ad in the world and I would not see it. If you are selling ads, be in the business where creating an environment where people are looking, put together people with an interest and those trying to reach them. As an advertiser, I need to make products that people want to here about and talk about them in ways that people want to hear about them and then make something remarkable about it so I tell people.
CR: why choose the expresso machine?
SG: it was the story about this Swiss machine
CR: Story is important to you?
SG: it’s all about the story, facts are what engineers do..but no one makes a decision based on facts. Humans tell a story whenever they do things. What marketers do is tell stories that spreads. If true, authentic and stands up to scrutiny then it will spread.
CR: Starbucks is about an idea. this is an idea, the couch, it brings you in
SG: Starbucks grew because of the couch, the 3rd place. There is a couch there so people will say I’ll meet you are Sbux. there is a special brew. You go there and you know you are home, something comfortable. On traveling, people look for sbux – it’s comfortable
CR: I view my programme, I tell stories. Last night I had the Iranian president on my show. I view it as telling a story. Who are you and why do you tell this and who are you trying to impress? Are you the problem or the solution. It was a story about someone coming to the US. It’s crucial to everything.
SG: Chavez could have come last year with same facts but without a story it would not have spread. Advertisers have been paid for 50 yrs to tell a story in 30secs. Now it does not work. And advertisers just want it to go back. There is a short term opportunity is to go to advertisers and say it is just like TV but in a new place, That story is where the first wave of money came from. I sold campaigns with that story. The future is not in doing that but in persuading a select number of advertisers that if they change their ways the upside is huge…drive this deep into org…the curve goes right up
CR: what do you bring to the table
SG: want ideas read my blog. I do not do advertising on blog,
CR: you express you in your blog,.
SG: my motivation is that I have a noise in my head and yo make the noise go away and I put it on the blog. If they run with it then I’m happy. the business model? you could protect ideas by wrapping and selling them…ideas leak really easily when digital..and now you have a choice, propel them and let them spread. if you never broadcast an ideas no one will steal..and no one will know. If you share them you can sell the souvenir edition…get the idea, buy the premium book or get me to talk about it. I charge for this.
CR: a few years ago I interviewed people outside the White House…in some cases there were mental issues..they had a buzz in their head….(laughter) look at the titles of your book..the dip..there’s a right time to go
SG: average is punished now. Google only identifies the last inch of the reach. the last inch, the exceptional area is where the value is. if you are committed to average, to fitting in, that is a dead end. without the extra inch, then stop and do something else
CR: the purple cow?
SG the cow was at the last web shift. if you cannot shout at people to get your message, you need to get your fans to do stuff…you need to get people to talk about something remarkable…ideas spread not by buying ads to reach average people buy average products…make a remarkable product and people will talk. (Sock story) Little MisMatch socks) everyone wants something to talk about
CR: new book is The Meatball Sunday
SG: there’s all this exciting stuff and how do we get there and why does it work for some orgs and not others. If your org makes a commodity and try and make it diff…you wreck it. people who are going to win are those who are building a new business,. An example is Wedgewood, he changed everything because the world was ready. Others had tried, but with the old model
CR: Microsoft..when bringing out Vista, you made the point that they gave away the package to influentials to hope they would like it and talk about it and they still did the rest of the advertising
SG: MS challenge in the last few years is that big orgs have trouble making remarkable products and Zune and Vista were not remarkable;, They have spent 1b$ on marketing..and if they had spent that on making remarkable products then they would have been better. With 1b no one wants to take a risk and be the person who fails.
CR: if it had been talked about then people would get one
SG: people say the iPhone was hyped..compared to MS it was 1/50th…apple spent money on making a great product.
CR: 4 people got one (as part of the pre-launch marketing)
SG: if you define marketing as having the guts to make something you love. This is a lousy phone, it just it. but I love it, I love to hold it. its proved to me that you can do great stuff is you try. it proves that you can challenge the status quo at every level
CR: take Zune
SG: you take it! Why did not someone quit..tell people that it won’t work. Can we shift a moment I want to tell you a little story about Squidoo. we have 4 people and it’s in the top 500 site. we asked ourselves about how to build something people wanted, and then get out of the way. we have no money on advertising and marketing. but we built people that they want to promote./ the first 1000 people we invited and then they tell people and then every day we grow a few 1000 more. people build pages about things they are obsessed with. they let you understand in context. with no money we would build something millions would use. I built it to prove a point that you need to redefine marketing. (RC: an aside that is a pure product pitch)
CR: you say yours is the most widespread blog, written by one person in English
SG: I was early, i do not ask for much. I try to give people things, ideas, a new way of thinking.
CR: how do you know what people will be talking about tomorrow..how do you know
SG: I think most people do not benefit from being at the cutting edge. Look at the ‘firsts’, they are rarely the ones that people remember. The profit lies not at the pointy part of the curve but when it starts to scale. People need to get way better at grabbing the big thing, figuring how to take the tool and run with it in a way that works. I wrote Permissions Marketing 8 years ago. 4-5 yrs later people were rolling out products that took advantage of this idea. Daily Candy started 6-7 yrs ago. they are great. The opp is not to hesitate but diving in
CR: Facebook or myspace?
SG: FB is amazing..how do you monetise and how do you keep it private. Why can’t twitter now see my facebook…but once I get my data out there it is not worth as much to fb. there will be a big conflict about whether the data is the service or is yours.
Audience Questions
Q: will exceptional become average?
SG: people asked what happens when permission is everywhere..once its there its there. we do not need 50 exceptional cell phones, it is too crowded. the challenge is to be exception for something that has not been done yet
Q: I work for an ad agency, we think about the CMO we are speaking to. the lifespan of CMO is becoming compressed…so many of them undersntad the points but the professional behaviour is different
SG: what ad agencies should do? business model works now..15% of money you keep but you need the money coming in. now we need to spend half the time doing what we did and half time working with engineers to make great products. The CMO needs to understand that she needs that she can do this…understand that C stands for Chief…at Jetblue, the CMO was head of training for all people. CMO needs to know that they way they answer the phone is part of the marketing, once they understand then things will change.
CW: jetblue and storm?
SG: Jetblue made a mistake that undermines their story..they said they would never act like United and then they said. their reactions was enough…and they have recovered the story. I said they should have given everyone 100 tickets..people would have talked about that
Q: do you think that human behaviour has changed? or are you saying things that people have never said
SG: I have never had an original idea….human nature has not changed but tech has amplified stuff. tech brings lots of people in front of us..we can criticise people anon, IP is stolen everyday. diff aspects get amplified and marketers have to play by diff rules.
CR: citizen experts..have they reversed the traditional power equations
SG: everyone has a bad flight, then they want to tell people. There is a need to air when they love something or when they hate something. the difference now is that people are listening. we want to be heard. a few years one of my kids was sick..I went to google to ‘stop vomiting’ the first research was someone wanting to charge 5$ for a piece of knowledge. I paid the money and then blogged it. 3 days later i was number 1 in google
Q: you mentioned Google 3-4 times…a lot of us use it but we see it as a challenge
SG: it’s an easy icon. Google’s engine is really powerful and will get more so. that model (ad words) pays for a lot of the frilly stuff. so when we get to the next generation will they have figured out another winner? the tech industry has a long history of the king not figuring out the next thing. I do not know what the next generation is, maybe it’s the facebook platform, new forms of interactive ad…in 3 yrs time there is no way to predict if Google is dominant. they have as good chance as anyone else but you cannot predict Google is doing smart stuff.
