Sunday, September 30, 2007

3 Elements of Marketplace Ideology In Information Age By Seth Godin

Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is a best-selling author of business books and speaker of the late 1990s to the present. His first book to achieve mainstream popularity was on the topic of permission marketing.

Godin graduated from Tufts University in 1982 with a degree in computer science and philosophy, and he earned his MBA in marketing from Stanford Business School. From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software.

In 1995, Godin founded one of the first online marketing companies, Yoyodyne. He sold the company to Yahoo! in 1998. As a part of the sale to Yahoo!, Godin became Vice-President of Permission Marketing at Yahoo!.

For a period of time, Godin served as a columnist for Fast Company.

In late 2005, Godin founded the "recommendation network" website Squidoo.


Godin’s ideology combines three elements:

First, the end of the "TV-Industrial complex" means that marketers no longer have the power to command the attention of anyone they choose, whenever they choose.

Second, in a marketplace in which consumers have more power, marketers must show more respect; this means no spam, no deceit and a bias for keeping promises.

Finally, Godin asserts that the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable. Godin refers to those who spread these ideas as "Sneezers", and to the ideas so spread as "IdeaViruses".

He calls a remarkable product or service a purple cow.

Seth Godin is known for a very visual, personal, and dynamic speaking style that has earned him a large following.

He is the author of a popular blog and several books on how ideas spread. Business Week said of him "Seth Godin may be the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age".

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