Video Transcript: Seth Godin: The Art of Marketing

When the last few months I had two books come out. One is called poke the  box. Poke the box is about the notion that in a world that's changing fast, the  biggest rewards go to people who are taking initiative, as opposed to waiting for  something to happen to them. And my latest book, which is a limited edition, it's  called we are all weird. And the argument of we are all weird is that there's this  normal distribution, this curve that shows the mass market in the middle, and it's leaking right, that the masses are finding things they like better than average,  and as it moves to the edges, it's people who market to the edges and embrace  the edges that are embraced by the audience. Well, most people think  marketing is a task, neither a science nor an art. It's a task where someone  gives you an average product for average people, and your job is to hype it and  spin it and promote it and advertise it so that the masses will buy it. And I'm not  buying that. I think that marketing is the art of making something that people  want to talk about, of producing something that people want to engage in. So  marketers have to move upstream now. We have to stop being the last step in  the process and start being the first step. What's next doesn't matter. It's what's  now. What's right now is for the first time ever, you can reach the world. Right  now. We're in the connection economy, this notion that we are connecting  people to one another. If you wait for the next thing, you're going to be waiting a  really long time. This is the next thing you know. It doesn't count until you ship it. It's not art until it meets the market. It's just meetings, and meetings are a waste  of time. You've got to figure out how to engage. You got to figure out how to be  in the world if you want to find out what's going to work. Well, I think it's three  things. Don't go to meetings, don't have a television right there. That's 12 hours  a day that I get that most people don't, and figure out what you're not going to  do. I don't tweet, I don't use Facebook. People think I'm an idiot. First to say I'm  not going to do that. But if I can't do it, well, if I'm not willing to engage in it in a  way I'm proud of, I'd rather not do it at all. You know, I think a big part of it is  showing up every day for, I don't know, seven or eight or 10 years, the first three years are the hardest, and too often, people put a lot of heart into their work, but they don't stick it out. They don't get through the dip. And I think that's a shame.  You know, the early, early stuff I did 25 years ago isn't as good as what I was  doing now. So I'm really glad I've been doing this for 25 years. I don't think you  get to be a thought leadership leader, unless you're willing to be a thought  punching bag, unless you're willing to have people criticize what you say. If what you're saying is safe and what you're saying is obvious, then you're not a  thought leader. You're just speaking up. I think that, I think that we usually get  advice not to do stuff, and too often we don't listen to the advice where someone says, go make a ruckus. And every time I go and I make a ruckus, I'm pretty  glad I did quit watching and go make something.