Simplify Spotlight: Seth Godin Talks the Power of Marketing
In 1993, the late comedian Bill Hicks told marketers to kill themselves. Tearing their work apart, he addressed them as “Satan’s little helpers” and “ruiners of all good things.” When I Googled the quote to check its wording, search results turned up several articles about how veteran marketer Seth Godin is the antidote to that perception.
God, this guy’s good.
While it’s unlikely that Hicks would ever have changed his opinion, over the intervening years, Seth Godin’s books, blog, and online courses have repositioned marketing as something altogether different. According to Godin, marketing is no longer about hawking products that nobody needs, but instead about helping people find the ones that will actually make a positive difference to their lives.
This Is Marketing
- 15 min reading time
- audio version available
Godin’s new book, This Is Marketing, hit stores on November 13th, and acknowledges that while marketing is certainly a force to be reckoned with, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an evil one.
To hear more about Seth’s perspective on marketing after years in the biz, listen to this episode of Simplify Spotlight, where he and host Caitlin Schiller chat about what marketing really is, what it can and can’t do, and how it has changed fundamentally for the better.
If you like the sound of what Seth has to say — and you wouldn’t be alone in that; so does most of the Internet — why not listen to the full-length Simplify episode we recorded with Seth about a year ago?
In the meantime, check out his new book, This Is Marketing, or read or listen to its key ideas on Blinkist. And don’t miss his other titles while you’re at it. We’ll be back with season 5 in January. Until then, this is Simplify, checking out.
Want to read more of Seth’s work?
The Icarus Deception
- 15 min reading time
- audio version available
Poke the Box
- 10 min reading time
- audio version available
Linchpin
- 12 min reading time
- audio version available
Tribes
- 13 min reading time
- audio version available
All Marketers Are Liars
- 12 min reading time
- audio version available
Purple Cow
- 13 min reading time
- audio version available
Permission Marketing
- 15 min reading time
- audio version available
