Comments on: On Branding, Tribes, and Seth Godin Goes Wild

By: timmoon

timmoon — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:45:14 +0000

I'm not as optimistic about the “wisdom of crowds” because most people are followers. After all, the crowd led us into Iraq and that wasn't very wise.

In any case, Guy, you lay out a well thought out critique of Godin's work.

By: Ben Atlas

Ben Atlas — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:15:12 +0000

Seth actually replies to every email and follow up email people send him, a rarity. Send him an email you will get a response the same day.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:21:50 +0000

Like many marketing and publishing pundits, Godin's got a huge blind spot for fiction (especially literary fiction), and as you noted, views them as products instead of looking at the bigger picture. YouTube has proven that curators are invaluable and necessary, while also demonstrating the limitations of online advertising as a revenue source.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:16:38 +0000

I wonder if Brands-in-Public came out of his alternative MBA program, and because he's more of a 1.0 pundit who monitors the conversation but doesn't proactively engage, I can see where he might not have seen the downside to the project. Still, as the originator of Permission Marketing, it was incredibly tone-deaf (and hypocritical?) of him.

By: Ben Atlas

Ben Atlas — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:46:37 +0000

“I fear this comes from looking at book as products, in turn be marketed as products, instead of individual loci of ideas.”

Nothing else to add to this statement. There is one thing that I find very contradictory about Seth. On one hand he hates old marketing that abuses the users. On the other had he often slips into talking about the new marketing in similar terms. How do we f. the users with effective new tools.

By: Ryan Chapman

Ryan Chapman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:08:57 +0000

I agree Guy. I was initially excited about Seth Godin's ideas, but lately I've had reservations about his statements. It's hilarious to think one could ever organize a tribe of 100,000 people around “literary fiction;” the heterophily of an American literary readership is among its topmost virtues. I fear this comes from looking at book as products, in turn be marketed as products, instead of individual loci of ideas.

In terms of the industry's migration online, I think the models of YouTube and the music industry are good for authors to study: the role of the content producer will be democratized into the noise of the internet, with freak outliers (Keyboard Cat, Lily Allen) and increasingly important curators (Pitchfork).

By: Ben Atlas

Ben Atlas — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:20:26 +0000

I think Seth is isolated. Even the smartest people need someone who would *stress test* their ideas before they hit the reality. Perhaps most people are intimidated to tell Seth what to do and he needs it like the rest of the mortals. Its like you been looking at your own writing for so long you no longer notice your own simple typos.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:40:28 +0000

Agreed, Maria. I'll still recommend Tribes to any and everyone! But I think Godin's credibility took a big hit with the Brands in Public thing; it displayed a level of tone-deafness that was surprising from the originator of Permission Marketing.

By: mariaschneider

mariaschneider — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:47:22 +0000

Seth Godin is a marketer, not a saint. One of his books is titled All Marketers Are Liars after all. Just because Seth has lots of good ideas and shares them prolifically doesn't mean we should blindly follow suit.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:09:25 +0000

Publishing has never been a high margin business, and newspapers are in a very different situation than books, but it's not true that no one's making money doing it. What's challenging the major publishers are the horizontal consolidations (and the overleveraging that enabled them) which have effectively made them too big to succeed, especially in a down economy. (Reminds me of Lawrence's The Rocking-Horse Winner.)

Smaller niche publishers, old and new, have a great opportunity ahead of them, though. While every day isn't rainbows and butterflies, I think it's a pretty exciting time to be working in publishing itself, if not necessarily for specific publishers.