Seth Godin at Google

A video of Seth Godin’s presentation at Google.

Vintage Godin:

“There is a belief among a lot of companies … that technology wins. …I don’t think it does. I think what technology does is, it gives you a shot at marketing.”

“I believe that what made Google work were some brilliant, maybe not intentional, marketing decisions. And those decisions have allowed you the freedom to do some really cool technology.”

“The challenge is, if you’re going to bother doing something, is it worth talking about.”

“It’s at the edges that people wait in line and talk about you.”

“…emotional marketing: If you want me to talk about something, you better deep down love it. Or why should I?”

“People don’t surf the web. … They poke. They poke around a lot. Poking in and poking out. … Click on one ad and then click back. Click on another and then click back. … Back and forth. Back and forth. And then finally, what you have done is establish a lot of clues…. The problem with clues is that they are too slow. … You’re either going to give up or finally you will have meaning. … You can’t get somebody to be a happy surfer until there is a sense of meaning, until they get the big picture. I think the next frontier is … how do you put in one place enough clues that in one second I get the big picture, I have enough meaning to take action.”

“The Fashion/Permission Complex: Step number one: Make something worth talking about. If you can’t do that, start over. Step number two: Tell it to people who want to hear from you. Step number three: They do what people used to think of as marketing. They spread the word. They interrupt their friends. … And then the hardest part … Get permission from these people to tell them about your next fashion. … As this asset grows … you have the ability to launch new fashions. You don’t have to start from scratch every time. And you end up not having to find customers for your products but finding products for your customers.”

“When are you going to build an asset like that one? … The opportunity with all the things that you are building … is to start now before it is too late to build in a permission asset, to build in the ability to have people want you to be a closer partner. To be there so that you can make them the next fashion and they’ll listen. … The opportunity here is to keep building remarkable stuff, but to build it with a compass that says if we build stuff that people want to hear about in a way they want to hear about it, they’ll want to keep interacting with us.”