Thoughts on This is Marketing by Seth Godin (2019)
If you work in or anywhere near marketing you’ve likely heard of Seth Godin, if you haven’t already read his work. I have several of his books on my shelf right and started with more but they often disappear because I am so eager to share them.
Seth’s 2019 book, This is Marketing, is such a unique discussion of the topic, concise and engaging as he is known for, that I just want to share a few of the many quotes I wrote down.
“Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive each of us.”
This point articulates what I think marketing at its best should be about- not interrupting people, making empty promises, or selling people things they don’t want, but starting from a place of empathy and working out from there. As sensible and obvious as it seems, it still feels rare.
“If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile.”
It seems anyone who is selling anything or advocating for any cause is doing this.
“‘Roll Tide!’ is a promise about dominance.”
As a higher education marketer and brand strategist, and someone who grew up in a Big Ten college town, I am fascinated with the ways large public universities use sports to build affinity with populations far beyond their base of constituents.
“Your promise is directly connected to the change you seek to make, and it’s addressed to the people you seek to change.”
“‘Brand’ is a shorthand for the customers expectations. What promise do they think you’re making? What do they expect when they buy from you or meet with you or hire you?”
“If you want to build a marketing asset, you need to invest in connection and other non-transferrable properties. If people care, you’ve got a brand.”
“Without a brand, a logo is meaningless.”
Businesses of all sizes too often confusing ‘branding’ in the most superficial sense (your logo, livery, coat of paint) for brand strategy which is a clear intention for the position and promise you want to own in the mind of your customers and potential customers, and the reason why so many re-brand are ultimately futile.
“The market has been trained to associate frequency with trust. If you quit right in the middle of building that frequency, it’s no wonder that you never got a chance to earn that trust.”
This is exactly why any rebrand effort should be intentional; the human brain relies on pattern recognition and notices difference, so if you change your brand signals and symbology as a solution to short term market feedback like a bad quarter or fiscal year, and the change identity and messaging isn’t attached to any meaningful change in the nature of your product or service or promise, you’ve just wasted the attention and interest you may have temporary mobilized.
“Facebook and other social platforms seem like a shortcut, because they make it apparently easy to reach new people. But the tradeoff is that you’re a sharecropper. It’s not your land. You don’t have permission to contact people, they do. You don’t own an asset, they do.”
Not only is this true, but as the brand of social media as a category has matured from what was once an array of innovative digital networks that allowed people everywhere to connect ostensibly for free, to what is seen as a cynically motivated oligopoly that exploits personal information and attention to sell advertising, this has to have implications for the very countries, companies and causes seeking to build connection and trust and change through these networks; what does the change in perception and favorability in social media itself mean for brands that rely heavily or even exclusively on it reach their communities?
“Connected tribes are more powerful than disconnected ones.”
The power of the network effect in advancing a cause is well documented; the question or challenge will always be “how”, and the answer will always be changing.
Find ‘This is Marketing’ here on Amazon
