Seth Godin

In this talk, Seth Godin shows you how to do work you’re proud of, whether you’re a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or part of a large corporation.

Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems. Their tactics rely on empathy, connection, and emotional labor instead of attention-stealing ads and spammy email funnels. No matter what your product or service, this Seth will help you reframe how it’s presented to the world, in order to meaningfully connect with people who want it.  Seth employs his signature blend of insight, observation, and memorable examples to teach you:

* How to build trust and permission with your target market.
* The art of positioning–deciding not only who it’s for, but who it’s not for.
* Why the best way to achieve your goals is to help others become who they want to be.
* Why the old approaches to advertising and branding no longer work.
* The surprising role of tension in any decision to buy (or not).
* How marketing is at its core about the stories we tell ourselves about our social status.

You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.

What do Apple, Starbucks, Dyson and Pret a Manger have in common? How do they achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and-true brands to gasp their last? The old checklist of P’s used by marketers – Pricing, Promotion, Publicity – aren’t working anymore. The golden age of advertising is over. It’s time to add a new P – the Purple Cow.

“Purple Cow” describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat-out unbelievable. In his new bestseller, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It’s a manifesto for anyone who wants to help create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have joined tribes, be they religious, ethnic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time.

Who is going to lead all these tribes? The Web can do amazing things, but it can’t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals—people just like you who have passion about something.

If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Ignore an opportunity to lead and you risk turning into a “sheepwalker”—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good.

Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers…. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you probably imagine.

In this classic but relevant talk, Seth Godin draws on the example of the creation and initial marketing failure of sliced bread to illustrate the importance of spreading an idea in order to sell a product and explores the limitations placed on an idea, no matter how brilliant, when it does not have reach.

Using several real-world examples, Seth describes the importance of getting people to care about a product through marketing as it is not always about the product itself or the patent or its uses, but its cultural relevance. He defines the era we live in as a century of idea diffusion, in which there are too many options and too little time, which is why getting attention through effective marketing can make bad or bizarre ideas more successful than boring ones.

Based on Seth’s bestselling book, All Marketers Are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works – and Why Authenticity Is The Best Marketing Of All, Seth has three essential questions for every marketer:

“What’s your story?”
“Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”
“Is it true?”

In this talk Seth dissects why marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. As Godin writes, “Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn’t invent storytelling. They just perfected it.”

Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn’t want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success? But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe. The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. In this speech, Godin shows audiences how it’s possible and reveals why it’s essential.

Will we ever be heard again? The internet has enabled anyone with a keyboard to speak up, and suddenly, everyone is, creating a maelstrom of spam, noise and hype. Bestselling author Seth Godin will challenge us to see things a little differently as we work to build effective communications that work. We’re living in a revolution, and Seth is the perfect guide to help us figure out what’s next.