14 Trends of New Marketing

Ok, I lied. If you pay attention to the first 14th, we'll throw in the 15th at no extra charge!

I found this post delivered by Seth Godin on avoiding Meatball Sundaes: a highly unpalatable dish that combines traditional commodity marketing with new marketing.

1. Direct Communication - between users and the people who make stuff. Your organization should be open to this direct communication to users. Make it easy, seductive, and fun to contact your company.

2. Amplification of Consumers - every consumer has become a critic and every consumer has the power to speak loudly. If you own a restaurant, every person that comes in is the potential reviewer because of the power of the Internet. If you run a hotel - every guest has the potential to be a reviewer for Fodor’s. If you run a cable TV company and one of your installers falls asleep while he’s supposed to be installing cable and it ends up on You Tube - it will undo millions of dollars worth of advertising.

After discussing these two points, Godin switched gears for a moment to stress that we always have a choice - he am not suggesting you stop making meatballs- he is suggesting that you choose that you either make meatballs or you don’t. Need to pick an integrated solution that is coherent.

3. Authentic Stories - what we know now is that you can’t tell two different stories to one person. The constituents are going to talk to each other. Your stories must be authentic and consistent. If the story is coherent and is shared - then the story will last fall longer than the facts ever do. People buy stories - good stories hold up under scrutiny.

4. Speed - has reached whole new levels. Two types of organization - one’s that are organized around speed and those that have competitors who have organized around speed.

5. The Long Tail - simple law of physics/human nature. As you add choices - sales go up. If you can own all of those choices - you win. Example. Amazon gets ½ their revenue from titles that Barnes and Noble doesn’t even carry. The ones that go down the long tail the faster - wins

6. Outsourcing - we are no longer in the factory business. The businesses that you own that make the meatball is old fashioned - outsourcing takes the factory out of the picture. Ex. Jott.com - you call and say you want to Jott something to yourself. Within 20 minutes, you get an email written what you said. A great way if you want to remember something when you are on the road. Godin wanted to know how they did this - and it turns out that they outsourced it to the third world where people listen to your Jott and then send you that email.

7. The Dicing of Everything - Google has shred the world a little big. The internet allows Google to take front doors and bust them open. They take things that are in bundles and they unbundled them. When you need information, you go to Google for your information, no need to go to bundled sites like cnet for your info.

8. Infinite channels of communication- Now there is an infinite number of ways to get information out there. Ex. look at the selection of analgesics, brands of beer, you have to understand that scarcity is no longer the power there used to be. Those scarcity rules are gone - you have to come up with a different way. It isn’t branding - we are branding our ways to death. You aren’t entitled to my attention.

9. Consumer to consumer - the fact is that your consumers are ganging up on you. They are talking to each other. You can enable that (Kiva, EBay) you can create industries where industries never used to exist. Connecting people who didn’t used to be connected.

10. Difference and the shift between scarcity and abundance - A good example is 6 years ago - a disposable cell phone seemed like a good idea. Today - we’d be queasy about the environmental impact. Used to be that fresh water was abundant - but today it isn’t. Take a hard look at what’s in short supply, and what’s not - and realize that our business is busy trying to make scare what is abundant and trying to use things that are abundant as if they are scarce - we can turn those things upside down.

11. Big Ideas - Big ideas are far more powerful than they were previously. Big product ideas. Example, the iPhone was hyped by the users because it was fun to talk about. When someone has something fun to talk about (example Numa Numa video) - it spreads like wildfire - Not because it’s a big marketing idea - not because it’s a big advertising idea - but because it’s a big idea in and of itself. Big reward for people who can find those ideas and bring them to market.

12. Who vs. How Many - Companies pay a premium to advertise on the Superbowl because of how many are watching. It used to be if you were selling to the masses, it matter a little bit that you reached the masses. Now, you care a lot more about who. A blog that only reaches a 1000 people could very well be more useful than the Superbowl.

13. The New Rich - The difference between the old rich and the new rich. The old rich were all the same - they were easy to find, they lived in Newport, they played polo, they played golf, they all read the same magazines etc. The new rich are like us - they are much more democratic, they do stuff that rich people didn’t used to, this idea means that there are some rich people in every demographic which changes the way you segment your marketing and the stuff you choose to make.

14. New Gatekeepers and No gatekeepers - People who used to have power as gatekeepers are finding their power disappearing. Instead, you have people having enormous of power and they are the gatekeepers. In addition, there are no gatekeepers, if you have a great idea, put it on YouTube - no one can say no, build your own website, your own Squidoo page - no one can say no.

15. The death zone between scarcity and ubiquity - In an inverted bell curve, there is a death zone between scarcity and ubiquity. Godin suggested that at either end of the spectrum, you win. You win if you are everywhere (Jerry Seinfeld) you win and if you are only a few places - but are in high demand - you also when. It’s when you are in the middle that you have trouble.