Transcript: Small is the New Big: Seth Godin Speaks

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1674/small-is-the-new-big-seth-godin-speaks

Guest: Seth Godin
Host: Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices

Seth Godin
The thing about Social Media that frustrates marketers to no end is that you can't buy attention and that if you have no choice, but to think and act small. Then you'll try to say well here is a 100,000 person community, how can we buy it? What you'll do instead if you're just four people, how can we amaze them? That change in posture, that change in attitude is the single biggest shift, that's going on the Internet right now.

Steve Wilhelm - PodTech
This is PodTech.net, welcome to MarketingVoices featuring the fresh perspectives of innovative marketing leaders and examining, how Social Media is changing marketing throughout the world. Here's your host Jennifer Jones.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Hi, this is Jennifer Jones and today on MarketingVoices I have the privilege of speaking with Seth Godin, who is just one of these people that many people don't need an introduction for, but he is a marketer extraordinaire and he is a prolific author. He's got seven best selling books under his belt currently. His latest is called "Small is the New Big," and we're going to be talking about that a bit today. He's also founder and CEO of Yoyodyne; which is a leading interactive direct marketing company, which was sold to Yahoo! in 1998. Plus, I also learnt by reading about him that he's considered to be one of the 21 speakers for the next century for successful meetings.

So, if anybody listening to this and they want to talk to him about that at some point, you should feel free to do so. So, Seth with that long introduction welcome to MarketingVoices.

Seth Godin
I know, its way too long, but thank you for having me.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Well, you're very accomplished, you also have a Stanford MBA and being here in Palo Alto, California we're very familiar with Stanford. So, what I would really like to do is start first with your perspective on what you feel is the most important take away from your newest book, "Small is the new Big"?

Seth Godin
Well, my newest book is actually my oldest book, because I've been writing it for more than seven years and it is a collection of riffs and rants and blog posts and magazine articles that I realized we're fading away because even though the Internet never forgets; it's awfully hard to find some stuff after it's up there. So, I collected what I think is the best bunch of it and realized that there were some common themes. I think the biggest theme and that's what I call the book is that big use to matter; big companies, lot's of employees, lot's of assets, the ability to have a huge marketing budget and power seizing call centers.

All those things helped to succeed. In the last four or five years, big has become not an asset, but actually an impediment and small is what helps you to succeed. Not necessarily small in size but thinking small or even better acting small. Treating people with respect, being willing to change a policy, having no ad budget, so that you're required to make really remarkable products, where the word spreads as opposed to making average products for average people that have to be advertised and hyped.

What we discover is that the best way to get big is to act small, is that being close to the market and treating people like they have a choice, whether they're your employees or your customers, is really the only way to succeed now.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Okay, so give me some examples of people, companies, whatever that you think are doing this very well.

Seth Godin
Well, it always gets me in trouble when I give examples, because then tomorrow some big accounting scandal will occur and that will be the end of that, but ...

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Take a risk, take a risk.

Seth Godin
...if you go ahead and buy something from L. L. Bean and three months later, you don't like it anymore and you tear the knee open or whatever you ship it back. They just send your money back, they don't ask any questions because they understand that the cost of challenging all their very best customers, every single time they make a decision like that is far, far greater than the cost of just sending them new pair of pants. You compare that to the snap that hit Dell on Jeff Jarvis' Blog where for months he was screaming and yelling online in public and no one at Dell had the authority to call him up and just fix the problem.

So, there we see the distinction, the distinction between two companies that might be similarly big in their industries; one which has a policy and a mindset that says, how would we act if L. L. Bean himself was still around and the other one that succeeded at least for a while on the back of policies.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
So, how do you feel 'Small is the New Big' as it relates to Social Medium Marketing? Obviously, the show is all about that and trying to really teach marketers about everything in social media and that now extends beyond just Wikis and Blogs and Podcast, so, try to relate that back to the people that are really thinking about social media.

Seth Godin
Well, here's the thing that I want to say to the marketers, most marketers is going to marketing because they like being in-charge, they like being listened to, they like talking to people who have to listen because they have brought in it (ph); that's why you go into marketing and not say that way. The thing about social media that frustrates marketers to no end is you can't buy attention.

That if you have no choice, but to think and act small. Then you'll try to say well here is a 100,000 person community, how can we buy it? What you'll do instead is, there are just four people? How can we amaze them? That change in posture, that change in attitude is the single biggest shift that's going on the Internet right now. This idea that just because you want something to succeed doesn't mean it will.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Okay, the other thing that I'm wondering that relates to this is, is the fear factor in that (ph), which I think is also -- what I've seen in PodTech and talking to people here and our clients is, especially for the Baby Boomers. They're really fearful of doing exactly what you're saying because it is so unethical to how they've always worked. So, how do you get them over that hump?

Seth Godin
Well, they're afraid of everything. My generation wants to live forever fully especially we will, as long as "we don't screw up." So, there are millions of paralyzed middle managers out there; who are stuck and I make my living giving speeches to groups pointing out that, the thing that they have to fear the most is being stuck, that the riskiest thing to do is to play it safe. What we know, is that the organizations, the package goods companies, the service organizations, the business-to-business companies that try to do what they did yesterday, but a little better are falling behind.

If we take a look at which brands are growing and which sites are getting more traffic and which things are getting talked about, which stuff is getting bought. It's not just people who are using the tactics of 15 years ago, it's people who're playing by fundamentally different set of rules.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
So, don't you think that really isn't within a realm ultimately of most marketers? Most of the marketers have to report to a CEO, so, isn't that really the CEO's job to get them unstuck and get them feeling comfortable?

Seth Godin
Well, one of the things that I hear a lot is people saying, "My boss won't let me." What they're really saying is, I went to my boss and I want her to give me complete authority to do what I want, but I don't have any other blame if it fails. Well, of course, your boss won't let you. She's not crazy, that what you need to do is take small risks, take responsibility for them. If you go to your boss and say, we're going to spend 10% of our budget doing this thing, I know it's a little whacky and I'll be responsible for what happens: a) You're not going to get fired when it doesn't work and; b) She's going to say, "Sure go ahead and do that," because that's how the company grew in the first place. If you're sitting down waiting for a memo to come from the corner office says, "Go ahead and do what you want, don't worry about it," it's not happening any time soon.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
So, do you think this really makes marketing harder or easier? In a sense it sounds like from your perspective it might be easier, but like I said as, I empathies with those marketers that I come in contact with, it seems like it's harder. So, where do you come out on that?

Seth Godin
Well, if you want a manual or if you want to be able to call an agency and say, "Here's $20 million, solve my problem." It's much, much harder. If on the other hand, you want to get back to first principles, you want to have more influence in your organization because in this new world marketing needs to run product development, marketing needs to run customer service, marketing needs to run training and hiring and human resources because all of those things are marketing now. This is the greatest opportunity for marketers (Inaudible) the television, because what it means is, there's a whole new chance to reshuffle the deck. Everyone knows about the airline business, which makes it a great example. American, United, Continental they're all played by the rules and all of them put together made less money than JetBlue did last year, because JetBlue cheated, JetBlue played by a fundamentally different set of rules.

Now, you could say it was super risky, but I think they played it safe. I think they're putting TV's is in the back of the seat instead of putting ads on TV; was the smartest thing they ever could have done.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
So, how do you best listen to your customers?

Seth Godin
Well, most of the times you need to ignore your customers because the goal is to get your customers to talk to each other and you need to listen to what they're saying to each other, but if Henry Ford had listened to his customers he would've made better buggy whips and if Thomas Edison had listened to his customers he would have made brighter candles. The customers want fashion, they want style, they want stories, they want to be led to a place they can't yet imagine. That's your job, that's what you get paid for.

Once you started that process and the customers start whining to each other about something you've done wrong, you need to listen to that and you need to respond to it, but you can't let your customers for an insight and innovation because they don't know how to do that on mass. They don't know how to say, as a group "We really want to go there."

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Okay, so this is sort of the first time that I've ever done this on MarketingVoices, but I think it's a great idea, as I've actually had people respond on my email and to the PodTech's Blog and they asked questions. So, I've got a question here from Dugh Howard, who is a Marketing Director in the Tech Sector in the San Francisco Bay Area and he wants to know this. He says "Seth, you've helped illuminate and define the power of the individual and businesses" it's kind of a long question, "and with a growth of Web 2.0, you've seen more power available for each individual. So, have the community splintered or is each individual now has less absolute power, but it's a greater share than now in a smaller communities."

Seth Godin
So, let me try to say it in a different way. Thirty years ago demographics ruled, you wanted to know the name and address of every person in New York City who had a permit to carry a handgun and a dog and if you'll do that, you could do interesting things, so do all these silos and it was completely bogus, because demographics are irrelevant, psychographics are what matters. What people do is more important than who they are. Well, there's an infinite number of psychographics out there. There is infinite number of people who are interested in talking, but also like backpacking or they're into deep sea scuba, but they're like reading Thomas Pynchon.

So, what we see is that any given individual now has many platforms on which to stand. She can stand up and talk to different micro-communities and be heard; whereas in the old days you couldn't be heard. You could even write a letter in a magazine, but it wouldn't get published. Now, you can be heard and super good ideas or super weird ideas are what -- some of the remarkable ideas spread. So, someone goes to a hotel has a bad experience makes it into a PowerPoint presentation, it get seen by 4.5 million people online because it spreads from one micro-community to another.

So, I think individual consumers have more power than ever before, but even more interesting is that bloggers, the Scobles of the world, have huge amounts of power compared to what they had just five years ago, because what we're seeing is this new kind of media middleman if you will, who can't talk to 50 million people like Dan Rather, but they can certainly talk to 200,000 people with a lot of authority.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
So, what do you think people like Scoble should do with that? I mean, is it -- there are a lot of people that think well, that's too much powerful, one individual they shouldn't be able to do anything with it. Where do you come out on that?

Seth Godin
What makes it power, you -- the minute Dan Rather stepped over the line and did something that his viewers thought it was reprehensible, he lost his job. The minute a blogger jumps the shark and pitches the filth thing too often, he's gone. There is a well known blogger who I unsubscribed to a year ago, his blog came out and he blogged seven times in one day, he's gone. I can't listen to him anymore, talking about himself. He disappeared, he's, invisible, I'll never see him again. So, power is an interesting thing. Scoble and the others and have the power to tell certain kinds of stories to a certain group of people and that's it.

So, if you're in this for money, you are to develop an audience that wants to hear you talk about deals, discounts in retailing or you ought to develop an audience that wants to hear you talk about which kind of management consulting to buy because you can make plenty of money selling that information back and forth. If on the other hand you want the power to tell stories about spiritual redemption, you're not going to make any money at all, but you're going to have the ability to spread these ideas far and wide.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Oh, I feel like we could go on for hours, but I'm very conscious of your time. So, I just want all of my community here to know that I've been talking to Seth Godin, who's a best selling author, entrepreneur and his blog is -- I like you to talk everyone about, where your blog is? because I'd like to make sure everyone knows you, if they doesn't already know you.

Seth Godin
Okay, well thank you. The best way to find me is type Seth into Google and there's also a page I built with this free eBooks and a summary of my blogs from last several years and that is Sqidoo.com S-Q-U-I-D-O-O.com/seth, Squidoo is my newest project; it's something we are doing to help lots of people both spread ideas and raise money for charity.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Right, I didn't get into that at all because I want to get others. I'm hoping that maybe you'll back and be a guest, so we can talk about that in the future.

Seth Godin
Super.

Jennifer Jones - MarketingVoices
Okay, so for all the listeners and in my community out there MarketingVoices, may all the voices you hear be MarketingVoices.