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Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?
vBulletin Book Store > vBulletin books beginning with M
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Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? |
Author: Seth Godin
Published: 2007-12-27 |
List price: $23.95
Our price: $16.29
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As of: November 20th, 2008 04:36:03 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Interesting Book, but does it work for Architects (I know we're not his primary audience)?
So I've been in the middle of reading a wide variety of books and Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae slips into the business/marketing area of my reading spectrum. Its a good read, easily taken in chunks, not surprising since he is a blogger. Actually, when I think about it I could easily imagine that most of his chunks are reformulated blog posts, but they hang together so nicely that it is not noticeable.
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br /The basic premise of his book is that the new way of marketing demands a new way of doing business. According to Godin, the old way of doing things is to mass produce a bunch of stuff and then interrupting people (like TV ads) to get them to want it. While that has worked fabulously in the past, he contends that there are too many ways to get people interrupted and they are shutting off the interruptions that happen to them. Thus there a new type of marketing (direct communication with consumers, long tail, google, web2.0) has arrived and you can't just apply the new marketing to the old business model and expect it to work. As per his title, you can't just put flashy sundae toppings (cream, sprinkles, cherry) on the classic old meatball and expect anything good to come out of it. The web is not just a more efficient way of doing things, but a paradigm shift way of doing business with consequences that reach past the IT department.
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br /However, as a designer, I'm not sure how new marketing works with my industry, even after reading the book. Part of the confusion is that Godin basic dichotomy is the mass versus the individual. If so, the architecture and design field is already a very personal profession (especially at the small firms that I have worked at). Maybe he's saying the paradigm shift is tilting the world towards my direction. If so, the lesson may well be that architects should get off of this mass production/prefab myth that they have been chasing for this past century.
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br /Even so, I guess the book presents a mindset that may be useful in jumpstarting how one should view the role of computers in design, using them as more than just hyper efficient drafting mechanisms. Or it maybe a bunch of new-speak that isn't really work practicing. I'm just not sure -- but I do think it is a good read, even though it is less entertaining than his other book Small is the New Big (which actually is a collection of blog posts).
Six Elements Review - 7.1/10
Business as usual isn't working anymore.
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br /Seth Godin portrays the orthodox business practice trying to embrace the New Marketing as "Meatball Sundae". Meatball is straightforward and ubiquitious. The New Marketing is whipped cream and a cherry
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br /Part 1 speaks out the difference between the old marketing (mass media, TV, command-and-control) and The New Marketing (fashion, stories, permission and promises)
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br /The highlight of the book is in Part 2, The Fourteen Trends
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br /Trend1: Direct Communication and Commerce Between Producers and Consumers
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br /Trend2: Amplification of the Voice of the Consumer and Independent Authorities
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br /Trend3: Need for an Authentic Story as The Number of Sources Increases
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br /Trend4: Extremely Short Attention Spans Due to Clutter
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br /Trend5: The Long Tail
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br /Trend6: Outsourcing
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br /Trend7: Googl and The Dicing of Everything
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br /Trend8: Infinite Channels of Communication
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br /Trend9: Direct Communication and Commerce Between Consumers and Consumers
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br /Trend10: The Shifts in Scarcity and Abundance
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br /Trend11: The Triumph og Big Ideas
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br /Trend12: The Shift From "How Many" to "Who"
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br /Trend13: The Wealthy Are Like Us
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br /Trend14: New Gatekeepers, No Gatekeepers
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br /Part 3 is "Putting It Together", it is basically the conclusion with some nice case studies in the final part
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br /What I'm going to tell you is the breakdown of the dimensions of the content of the book into six dimensions: ease of understanding (how easy it is to understand), distinction (how unique it is), practicality (can it be done?), credibility (does it sound true and real or is it from out of nowhere?), insight (Is it deep of is it shallow?), and reading experience
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br /If a book is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience, I consider it an excellent book.
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br /Meatball Sundae:
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br /Ease of Understanding: 8/10: Seth wrote it very simply, each part is divided into small sections (blog-like) instead of a long chapter. 2 points taken due to a maximum use of technological stuffs which can be hard to understand by brick-and-mortar marketers unless he or she read it with an online computer.
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br /Distinction: 7/10: There have been books already about these trends, The Long Tail, far too many books on outsourcing and these technological trends, a famous The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman offers a great insight on this. However, Seth Godin is magical in the sense that he can thread and tie them together.
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br /Practicality: 5/10: Although there are many new and fun things to learn and the 14 trends, he did not offer much on how to ride the trend. I now have a blog, subscribed to Twitter, Squidoo, etc. Now what? The stories mostly stop there
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br /Credibility: 8/10: Seth's words are honest and real, he wrote about blogs and communication and he is the master at it with examples of successes and failures and a long lists of examples from other sources in a small book.
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br /Insight: 5/10: Since the book is divided into many small chunks, there is no subject that is deep. It is understandable though, this is no Philip Kotler's textbook.
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br /Experience: 9/10: This book is fun. My feeling was like sitting with Seth Godin himself while he shows me what's in his laptop and what should we do with our browser.
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br /Overall: 7.1/10: A very good book on how marketing is and will be and the trends changing the marketing landscape forever but too little on the spot on methods and how-tos.
 A Meatball Sundae is just what you need!
Marketing genius Seth Godin has once again hit it out of the marketing ballpark with Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?. Colorfully and succinctly, Godin lays out what you might not want to hear: that the "Old Marketing" of television interrupts and mass marketing average products, is losing ground to the "New Marketing" in the Web 2.0 world, and you've got to pick a team.
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br /With fourteen clearly defined considerations of New Marketing in his toolbox, along with enough case studies (from companies you not only already know of, but have probably worked with) to prove his points, Godin makes a great case for not only utilizing these new tools, but also for adapting your entire business structure to work with them.
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br /What could be so compelling that a seasoned company would restructure into a fresh startup just to take advantage? The consumer. In today's online market, the customer is not only king, he's also the boss, the critic, and sounding board from which all new ideas come.
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br /It's never been a better time to be a consumer, an entrepreneur, or a creative. With Meatball Sundae Seth Godin makes us all feel new again!
Essential Reading for Nonprofit Execs
Seth Godin is an expert on the use of new web-based marketing techniques. In the Meatball Sundae, he provides big-picture descriptions and examples of fourteen trends that are changing the business and marketing world. The book is visionary and easy to read but does not provide how-to details.
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br /This is essential reading for not-for-profit executives whose organizations live and die based on the success of their marketing and fundraising efforts. While the book is aimed at the private-sector, imagine how you can make use of eBay, YouTube, Digg, and blogs to fundraise and draw attention to your cause.
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br /Perhaps the best example of these strategies (not discussed in the book) at work in the public sphere is the success of Obama's online fundraising and community organizing machine. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032702968.html?nav=rss_politics
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br /This is must-reading for everyone who wants to change the world.
Thinking Through Your Decisions
One thing about Seth's books is they always get me to thinking, and re-thinking. This time, I'm thinking about marketing in today's crazy upside-down new world. Every entrepreneur worth her/his salt should be thinking through their decisions about adopting new techniques, such as blogs and Twitter, and not just tag along with the crowd. Seth helps us sort it all out. For an expansion of concepts found in my own book, "The Expert's Edge," put this book on your study list too!
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