Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist and professional blogger, known for his ideas about how “Web 2.0″ affects advertising and marketing.
Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. One of the leading Marketing gurus and an A-List blogger inspiration to many.
A Few Excerpts From 10 Questions For Seth Godin
Hugh: For the benefit of gapingvoid readers not yet familiar with your work [all 14 of them], let’s get the main schpiel over and done with: From your perspective, what is “Tribes” about?
Seth: It explains why top-down, buzz-driven media is the past, not the future.
The world has always been organized into tribes, groups of people who want to (need to) connect with each other, with a leader and with a movement. The products, services and ideas that are gaining currency faster than ever are ones that are built on a tribe.
Harley Davidson and Apple are titanic brands for the very same reason. They sell a chance to join a group that matters.
On the concept ‘Everyone is a Marketer’ / ‘Everyone is a Leader’
If ‘tribes‘–connected, motivated groups of people–are the engines of growth, then it seems clear to me that what marketing means today is leadership. If you’re boring or staid, no one will follow you. Why would they?
Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.”
Marketing as a Story
“So much traditional marketing is built around the idea of “Merit” i.e. good quality, good prices etc. But the older I get, I keep asking myself, “What’s the story here? What’s the REAL story that people are GENUINELY going to want to tell other people?” Do you see Storytelling as a form of Leadership? How about vice versa?
In All Marketers Are Liars, my point was that people buy stories, not stuff, and it’s stories that spread, not stuff. An iPod made by Garmin wouldn’t be an iPod, would it? It’s the story and the affect and the whole aura that makes it worth $200.
Leaders tell stories. Gandhi or King or Che or yes, Rush Limbaugh. They tell stories. The stories matter and the words matter. Of course OF COURSE the product has to live up to the story, the service has to be there, the story has to be true. But no story, no idea, no marketing.”
If people trust the words written on a blog, if people come to like and identify with the person writing the blog, you have all the elements necessary to create a popular community focused on the creative output of just one person. Or in the case of a product — if the product tells a story that people relate with — this is the essence of brand marketing, telling a story.
This is why any person with a passion, a hobby, or a skill, and enough motivation to produce content on a particular topic — or someone that is selling a brand with a unique story — can build an audience, keep people coming back — and from a business perspective — ultimately, monetize that traffic, make the sale, and establish a leadership position.
…a lot of heavy stuff here from two of the leading marketering philosophers of our time.
