Books by Seth Godin

Seth Godin shows how people are increasingly getting tired of interruption marketing and explains how permission marketing can be used to build relationships with customers. He does not dismiss the need for interruption marketing or assumes that permission marketing is the panacea for all marketing problems. This makes for a well thought-out book explaining all the various aspects of this marketing methodology.

Tags: marketing

The author talks about the power of viral ideas, that allow marketers to quickly establish a hold on the minds of consumers. He explains why some of the older strategies like spending millions of dollars in TV advertising do not work as well in today's markets and how people in marketing have to focus on better ideas and smarter relationships. There is a reference to Malcolm Gladwell's connectors, mavens and salespersons in "The Tipping Point": Godin talks about "sneezers" who can help you sell your ideas faster than other kinds of consumers or salespersons. Overall, a very meaningful book relevant to our times.

Tags: marketing

A collection of Seth's blog postings, there are nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout the book. It does not have a coherent structure or focus (in fairness, the author does point that out at the very beginning), but nevertheless is very useful in helping one understand the latest trends as well as the constant principles that must guide a company in providing and marketing goods and services.

Tags: marketing

Using the concept of evolution, Seth Godin explains how companies, by expanding their vision and ability to change, can evolve to survive and beat market conditions. Companies can learn to "zoom" and not have to fight with change management. It is a well-meaning book, but it has a few problems. It is more directed to companies with dysfunctional and rigid environments. However, such companies need a serious overhaul of their corporate culture, leadership and policies to become more dynamic, which is usually possible only when the company is undergoing significant growth or losses.

A growing company usually is willing to experiment and adopt strategies and tactics that have potential. The problem is that only some potential ideas can be exploited successfully to provide adequate returns within a reasonable time frame, and the others will be discarded. This provides the opening for startups to take discarded ideas that may be profitable for them (but not profitable to the growing company) and attempt to create a growing market. This problem is explained in "The Innovator's Dilemma" and although Seth Godin has tried to explain it away through his evolution concept, he has only given it a superficial treatment.

The general failure of the book is that it attempts to run an entire discussion using a single metaphor and sometimes it stretches it too far.

Tags: business management innovation

"Tribes" is an attempt by Seth Godin at explaining the behavior of virtual communities. The world is moving away from broadcast marketing and other conventional advertising methods. Virtual communities can be harnessed to provide leadership, both for profit and non-profit. Such leadership can be through a blog, Twitter or myriad other Web 2.0 sites on the Web. The book explains how tribes and their followers work, and what you have to do to keep the tribe growing.

Tags: marketing technology

The book starts with explaining the concept of "The Dip", which is about the temporary roadblocks faced by any person striving to achieve top success in their field. This is in contrast to "The Cul-de-Sac" which is a permanent roadblock and not likely to go away. The trick to succeeding is to understand when to persevere and when to quit. But of course, that is the problem, isn't it? This advice is a bit dangerous to most people, because they don't know how to make that choice. Also there is the question of supply and demand. Even if a person works tremendously, they may not achieve top success because there are equally motivated individuals and there are limited opportunities. So diversification is less risky than specialization in such scenarios.

Tags: marketing