I was watching a talk that Seth Godin gave at Google in 2007. It was uploaded on jul 16, about 3 weeks after the first generation iPhone was released- so it’s interesting to hear Seth talk about printing out driving instructions– something that’s been rendered obsolete by smartphones, tablets and onboard navigation.

I can’t seem to find any transcripts of the speech, which makes me wonder: How long will it be before we have voice recognition techology that’s so sophisticated, it can chew up a YouTube video and spit out a transcript? Because that would be incredibly cool, and surely very useful in a big-data-analysis sense.

What’s interesting to me is how several sites mention the video, yet not a single one really gives it some genuinely thoughtful analysis. Everybody talks about how it’s great, but almost nobody talks about why– and those that do are just making “surface” comments.

Seth’s theory behind why Google defeated Yahoo!: Google’s landing page was simpler and more intuitive to use than Yahoo’s, and geeks (who were used to being asked for advice and recommendations by their casual user friends) would recommend Google, because that meant they wouldn’t get bugged again. Google was simpler and easier to use than Yahoo.

Tiffany & Co.’s Jewellery is free, it’s the light blue box that you pay for.

Little Miss Matched: Wanna see my socks? 11 year old girl to the next.

Technology doesn’t solve problems, it gives you a shot at marketing.

BMW has a marketing department called engineering.

X-Ray Vision: You pay $1, enjoy the anticipation, get it, get disappointed, then figure out who you can fool…

People told their friends. Nobody cares about you. Wakes up in the morning worrying about you. They only care about me.

Seth had a Google shirt, “Do you work at Google? Google is my friend, is my life. You’re guaranteed to have an intelligent conversation.”

Audacious promise. Change the way people interact, and that interaction makes them care about your brand.

Organic growth, word of mouth.

Google Ads worked for 2 reason:

Delivers anticipated, personal and relevant messages when they want to get them

1: about me, what i’m interested in right now. permission marketing. privilege.

2: costs a nickel. don’t need to pander to the average. put these two together and you have a magnificent engine.

Cat food isn’t for your cat, it’s for you. Not sustenance for your cat. well being for yourself.

plastic bottle water. we buy it because we want it, because we want the story we tell ourselves. Chanel No. 5 is $25,000 a gallon. we buy the story, the way it makes us feel. Google story. Everybody’s a marketer- some are marketers who code- and the challenge is to deliver on that story.

a story they can tell themselves and each other. is it remarkable? is it worth making a remark about? funnel- adwords catches people low down on the funnel.

flip the funnel into a megaphone. get influential people to tell 100 or 1000 people about how awesome something is.

Gmail marketing was brilliant. Limited people going in. Ability to trade it. People sold accounts on eBay. That wasn’t Google talking about GMail, it was

pain reliever. I don’t have a pain reliever problem. I solved my pain reliever problem 20 years ago. Why should I switch? Typepad. I’m not going to pay attention to you if it’s a problem i’m not interested in, worried about. Purple cow, giant lava lamp.

Hummer and Mini- on the edges, remarkable. It’s at the edges that people notice you. GM loses money on midrange cars. As you get bigger there’s pressure to stay safe, to conform, to fit in.

BMW has a marketing department called engineering and they keep making stuff that people choose to talk about.

You don’t buy a Hummer to get to SF, you buy it to tell a story.

If you want me to talk about something, to love something, you’d better love it too. I think this is what lots of marketing blogs miss out on. This could be what lots of stores miss out on, too. Show us that you really freaking love something. We’re all in the fashion business now. Do people really need that much space on their email? No, but it adds to the story.

What do socks do? Get rid of odor, keep you from getting blisters, you can make them in China, sell them to Walmart, etc. We didn’t need more socks, we wanted them.

Mr Splashy Pants. People don’t surf the web, they poke it.

Clues take too long.

meaning is the step before action. TV Industrial Complex. Buy ads, get more distribution, sell more products, make a profit, buy ads. Boring.

make something work talking about -> tell it to people who want to hear from you -> they tell other people, THEY interrupt their friends. That’s how Apple’s keynote speech works

finding products for your customers

Google Maps

problem is most people don’t have a search appliance problem. they don’t wake up in the morning and say “how am I going to solve this search appliance problem” because they don’t have it, you get stuck.

small businesses rarely tell each other about these kinds of successes. so if I bought one and it worked, I would not tell my friend who also owns a small business, “You gotta get this thing.” It’s not entering a marketplace that’s geared to have these conversations.

So as an organization, you need to help them have the conversations. That by bringing these people together, the ones who have it and the ones who don’t, by figuring out platforms where it’s easy for people to talk to each other, they’re more likely to talk about it. What you can do is to shre a couple of case studies and then get out of the way. Let them tell each other the truth. You build these communities who talk t each other. Things happen.

Go and find people who have really successful blogs.

Napster told 50 ppl in college, they told 50 people, 2,500 liao

MarketingTelly says:

“Yeah, yeah, yeah – we know the video is long. But what is long really? Think about a movie. Like in a fiction movie. If the movie is enjoyable and keeps you entertained, it doesn’t matter how long it is, right?

The same with this and other marketing talks on video. 48 minutes is just the right lenght if you find the content of Seth Godin’s presentation entertaining and thought provoking.  All marketers are liars is a pretty famous talk. When you watched the video from beginning to end you will have an opinion about it yourself. Did it live up to your expectations? Did you learn something new?

or perhaps most importantly; did it inspire you to get on with your marketing challenges and do good?”

M3 Sweatt says:

There are a number of memorable moments and thoughtful quotes to consider. One of teh ones that sticks with me is his view on the misconception of many companies, that “technology is going to solve every problem, [and] the marketing will take care of itself.”

That and his experience wearing a Google t-shirt in Manhattan.

PresentationExamples.com says:

“Great way to kick off The Presentation Examples Blog! Bestselling author and great speaker, Seth Godin delivers an entertaining presentation based on his book, All Marketers are Liars.”

Remarkable only means one thing: worth making a remark about. The challenge is, if you’re going to bother doing something: is it worth talking about? Keep making things worth talking about. It’s at the edges that people stand in line. It’s at the edges where people notice you.

Here’s what I enjoyed about Seth’s talk:

“BMW has a marketing division called engineering.”