My site Seth Godin :: Free Prize Inside offers a free copy of my bestselling mini-e-book, “Really Bad Powerpoint” to anyone who buys a copy of my new book.
This may shock you, but a large number of people are downloading the ebook without keeping their end of the bargain. Of course, I expected there would be a fair amount of leakage, but there’s quite a lot.
This is especially sad because all the proceeds from the sale of the ebook on Amazon go to charity. The optimist in me believes that people who download it without buying are going ahead and making their own donation.
But that’s not what astonishes me.
What astonishes me is that several of the folks who took a copy then had the chutzpah to email me with with follow up questions about the book! (see above).
June 27, 2004
No, it’s not a secret plot. Sethgodin.com and the others has a glitch.
Hope to fix it soon. Stand by!
Thanks for your patience.
ps NOW FIXED! Phew.
June 25, 2004
Stephanie Howard (Leo Alliance, Inc.) sends me this clip from AdAge:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Declaring that mass marketing no longer works and that “no single ad tells the whole story,” Larry Light, McDonald Corp.’s chief marketing officer, said McDonald’s has adopted a new marketing technique that he dubbed “brand journalism.”
Speaking at the AdWatch: Outlook 2004 conference at the New York Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Mr. Light described the concept as one marking “the end of brand positioning as we know it.” He went on to say that effective marketing should use many stories rather than employing one message to reach everyone. In effect, he declared that McDonald’s was abandoning the universal message concept.
“Any single ad, commercial or promotion is not a summary of our strategy. It’s not representative of the brand message,” he said. “We don’t need one big execution of a big idea. We need one big idea that can be used in a multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way.”
He went on to define brand journalism, which he also referred to as a brand narrative or brand chronicle, as a way to record “what happens to a brand in the world,” and create ad communications that, over time, can tell a whole story of a brand.
# # #
My take? Yay for Larry for realizing that monthilic marketing is broken.
I worry, though, about two things:
1. changing the marketing without changing the underpinnings of the business is almost always a bad strategy. If all the people, the systems, the real estate, the factories and the menus are organized around monolithic marketing, slapping a little brand journalism on top isn’t going to work awfully well.
and
2. The marketer doesn’t get to run the conversation. It’s not really brand journalism that’s happening, you see. It’s brand cocktail party! You get to set the table and invite the first batch of guests, but after that the conversation is going to happen with or without you.
I have four irreverent ideas for McDonalds:
1. Start your own brand of lightly sweetened caffeine free iced tea. 10% the sugar of Coke. 4 times the profit. A brand you can own. A way to significantly impact the health of the world. Phase out Coke. Completely.
2. Offer a free DVD of the award-winning SuperSize Me! documentary with every iced tea sold.
[no, I’m not kidding].
3. Challenge every store to offer something new and real and local and remarkable on the menu. Diversify times 100.
4. Bend over backwards to host meetups in your stores. Keep up with the free wifi. Sponsor soccer teams and girl guides and the astronomy club. Put chess tables on the placemats. Use the real estate advantage to create a place where people meet.
June 17, 2004
“My Life” by Bill Clinton: Exclusive Extract!!!. Even with all the technology at our disposal, great writing wins out every time. This post is breathtakingly viral.
AFTER you read the link above, feel free to read the riff below.
I posted that paragraph this morning. This then, I’ve gotten a lot of mail from folks who wanted to know why I was shilling for Clinton and to let me know how bad his book is.
Folks! It’s a parody! It’s subtle, but truly funny.
My lessons?
1. viral stuff is often obvious, isn’t it? In other words, if you’re too clever, some people don’t get it and it doesn’t spread well. On the other hand, be too obvious and it’ll just sit there. It’s the fine line (sort of like the Tom Bihn launder tag) that makes something go. Obviously, I misoverestimated some readers.
2. brands don’t guarantee a virus, but they sure can get in the way. Clinton’s brand is so tarnished for a portion of the population that they’d likely refuse a cash gift from him. They certainly didn’t bother to read the post until the end… they just decided they hated him, it, and by extension, me. Worth thinking about when you decide to trade in a little brand equity to move people to, say, an opt out spam program…
June 15, 2004
Continuing on my post of the other day, check out: (Bihn Label). (Thanks to Russell Buckley for the link).
As you first read about the hidden message, it may very well cause you to sit up straight and want to tell all your friends. It’s got just the right mix of mystery and style and lack-of-exploitation of the audience.
I then clicked over to buy a t-shirt, and my I was delighted to see that they’re being consistent with their actions in treating it as not just a publicity stunt to boost business. What if they DID do it on purpose? I think the intent does matter. Or maybe it only matters to me… Anyway, Tom makes great stuff (I’ve been a long-time customer–I might even have the tag!) and all the proceeds go to charity.
June 11, 2004
It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about you.
It’s about me, of course.
Amazon, meaning well, sent me a note offering a $5 gift certificate if I’d answer a short survey about their associates program. Good for them for wanting feedback. Good for them for compensating people.
http://globaltestmarket.com/20/survey/s.phtml?E_18764_113422F49632BE39
So, I visit the site (above) and discover not one or three or ten multiple choice questions.
Sixty three.
What sort of person sits still for 63 multiple choice questions?
How scientific is the feedback if it’s only from the people who answer 63 questions?
What concrete action can Amazon take with all this finely tuned statistical nonsense?
Wouldn’t it be a lot more useful to just say:
Tell us the three things you like most (or least!) about our program and how you would improve it!
Then have a real honest to goodness person read each one and write back.
Invite 100 people to do the survey. Then 100 more. A hundred a week for a year. You’d learn a lot.
My two cents.
June 10, 2004
Newspapers are in trouble. eBay has sucked the life out of classifieds. People have stopped reading papers. More folks read the NY Times online than on paper…
Is the answer to trick people into getting spam?
My wife sent me a link at the LA Times. In order to read it, I had to register. Here’s the last part of registration:
Notice that the box ISN’T checked. That’s the universal symbol for, “We’re honest and we want genuine permission from you before we send you stuff by email. So if you want it, please check here.”
I was glad to see that. But then I read the text. It says that the UNchecked box means that they WILL send you spam unless you affirmatively CHECK it to say you DON’T want it. (Even without the ALL CAPS I’m adding, it’s still confusing.)
So, let’s be clear here: In order to ensure its future in a world where everyone is online, one of the great newspapers on the planet is relying on second order trickery (because ordinary opt out isn’t nefarious enough). Do you really think they’re building much of an asset here? Can you imagine that three years from now the publisher is going to say, “I’m sure glad we tricked a million people into having no leg to stand on when we busily spam them!” Hardly.
What have we done?
The massive marketing engines of the car industry have decided to run roughshod over the idea of viral marketing and they’re working hard to manufacture ideaviruses as fast as they can:
AutoWeek – Car News
Why does it bother us so much when marketers try to subvert the ideavirus process and buy their way into our lives?
Precisely because it feels so intentional. Because it represents an unwelcome intrusion, a display of power… it’s a lot like spam, in fact.
When you run into someone with “Scion” tatooed on her forehead, it’s odd. When you realize that person got paid to do it, you feel used. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s a huge difference between the famous Honda Cog Movie (or the BMW movies) and the manipulative Scion campaign. In the first cases, the car companies built something worth talking about. In the second, the manufacturer just bought the conversation.
With more than 55,000,000 downloads to date, the BMW campaign is a success by any measure. It’s hard to imagine that Scion can afford to buy enough “buzz” to make a difference. If Permission Marketing is about dating, then buying these conversations is about nothing more than prostitution.
(PS what about bzzagent.com? Yes, they get paid to help start conversations. But a key part of their business model is that they DON’T pay the sneezers themselves. The bzzagents work for free. It needs to be that way for it to work, imho).
Is it a fine line? You betcha. So is dating, for that matter! The magic and the art comes in creating remarkable products that don’t cross the line… they’re worth talking about, but they’re not paid conversations.
Last month, I posted a bunch of notices looking to hire summer interns (yes, we’re set, thanks). The ads asked people to send in a three page PDF, describing their background, their goals and giving applicants a chance to really stand out and make their case.
This, of course, should be the dream opportunity for most job seekers. Instead of being treated as a piece of paper, a list of stats in a dry resume, here was a chance to actually tell a little about yourself.
HALF the people sent in a resume. Just a resume.
“Here’s my resume” was the total content of at least 20% of the cover notes I got.
Part of this is the result of being beaten down. Most of the system is about following the rules, fitting in and not standing out. But a lot of it, it seems to me, is that people are laboring under a very mistaken impression about what works–in life, in seeking a job and in marketing in general.
Most people, apparently, believe that if they just get their needle sharp enough, it’ll magnetically leap out of the haystack and land wherever it belongs. If they don’t get a great job or make a great sale or land a terrific date, it might just be because they don’t deserve it.
Having met some successful people, I can assure you that they didn’t get that way by deserving it.
What chance is there that your totally average resume, describing a totally average academic and work career is going to get you most jobs? “Hey Bill! Check out this average guy with an average academic background and really exceptionally average work experience! Maybe he’s cheap!!”
Do you hire people that way? Do you choose products that way? If you’re driving a Chevy Cavalier and working for the Social Security Administration, perhaps, but those days are long gone.
People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel.
So how do you make people feel?
Could you make them feel better? More? Could you create the emotions that they’re seeking?
As long as we focus on the commodity, on the sharper needle, we’re lost. Why? Because most customers don’t carry a magnet. Because the sharpest needle is rarely the one that gets out of the haystack. Intead, buyers are looking for the Free Prize, for that exceptional attribute that’s worth talking about. I just polled the four interns sitting here with me. Between them, they speak 12 languages. No, that’s not why I hired them. No, we don’t need Tagalog in our daily work…. but it’s a free prize. It’s one of the many things that made them interesting, that made me feel good about hiring them.
What’s your Free Prize?
June 8, 2004
Carson McComas sends this great tidbit: