Creativity Insights from Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a marketing guru, the founder of Squidoo.com, and the best selling author of several books, including All Marketers Are Liars, Purple Cow, Small Is the New Big, The Dip, Meatball Sundae, and Free Prize Inside!.  He also writes one of the most popular blogs out there, aptly called “Seth Godin’s Blog”.  Below you will find several creativity insights derived from the writings of Seth Godin.

Aim to Be the Best in the World – At Something

There is an endless supply of ideas, a gazillion different things of genuine value, and a million different areas from which you can pick one to be the best in the world at.  Godin advocates that: “I’ve never met anyone… anyone… who needed to settle for being average. Best is a slot that’s available to everyone, somewhere.”  He identifies the following as some of the reasons why you might fail to become the best in the world:

• You get scared.  People who offer something different are often criticized at first.
• You’re not serious about it.
• You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre.
• You focus on the short term instead of the long term and quit when things get hard in the short term.
• You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world, something in which you don’t have the necessary talent.

Know When to Quit and When to Stick

Godin argues that quitting is a vital part of success: he urges us to concentrate all our efforts on the things we’re going to win at, and quit everything else that gets in the way.  Quit ideas that are dead ends, quit time wasters, quit commitments that don’t further your goals, and so on.

The “Dip” is basically “the long slog between starting and mastery”, it’s the time during which you work very hard and see very little results.  Godin cautions that you have to know the difference between a dip and a dead end.   When you’re at a “Cul-de-Sac” situation, no amount of work will lead to success.  In his book Godin provides tips for finding your Dip, taking advantage of it and becoming one of the few players to emerge victorious on the other side.

He adds that losers fall into two basic traps: they either fail to stick out the Dip—when the going gets tough they simply give up—or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.

“Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny majority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most,” Godin writes. “Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early [when facing a dead-end] and refocus their efforts on something new.”

Be Unreasonable

Forget the following: “We did everything within reason and we still lost.”  You get beat by the competition–whoever else is striving to be the best in the world in your chosen area–when they do things that are unreasonable and you don’t.

As Godin admonishes, the unreasonable competitor always establishes the new benchmark and always ends up as best in the world.  There is a common saying that those who say “It cannot be done” are usually interrupted by someone doing it. Therefore, the only choice is to be unreasonable.

Be a Purple Cow

In his book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, Godin indicates that there is no short supply of boring ideas out there; the world is full of brown cows. If you want to be noticed, if you want to be unforgettable, you have to do something remarkable, the way a purple cow in a field of Guernseys would be remarkable. Be outrageous, test the limits, and never settle for just “very good”.

You’re either a purple cow or you’re not, that is, you’re either remarkable or invisible. He urges people to take control of their creative lives by taking responsibility for tough decisions and pushing themselves to make bolder choices.

The early adopters are the people that you need to win first and they’re not drawn to the average. So break the rules and stand out. A remarkable product, one that will make early adopters take notice, will produce “sneezers” who will distribute your “idea virus”. Look for the edges, explore the limits.

Find a product that is “too” something for most people, but absolutely irresistible for a small–but big enough to be profitable–group of people, who will in turn convince others to buy your product.  Word of mouth is the most effective way to get others to find out about you, and you encourage word of mouth by making something remarkable.

If you have a blog and are looking for more traffic, Seth indicates that you’ll earn it when you do something daring, interesting, useful, provocative, free, compelling, emotional or urgent.

Target a Niche: Small is the New Big

At the heart of “Purple Cow” is the notion of “Moore’s idea diffusion curve”, which is just a bell-curve that shows innovators, early adopters, early/late majority, and laggards.  You need to target the front of that curve by appealing your remarkable product to them as a niche.

A product or service that tries to be all things to all people will be nothing to everyone. The way you break through to the mainstream is to target a niche instead of a huge market. As Godin says in another one of his books, “small is big.” Create a product that dominates a niche: to think big start by thinking small.

Have Your Ideas Spread Like a Virus

Be sure that the early adopters in the niche you’ve identified learn about your product or service, as Krispy Kreme does by providing free donuts when it opens a new store. Those who care will tell everyone they know, which is the “idea virus” concept.  You can download a free copy of Godin’s “Unleashing the Ideavirus” here.

Add a “Free Prize”

Free Prize Inside argues that a series of small incremental changes to your product to add value is better than either a huge marketing campaign or a huge research budget. For example, when Amazon took their large marketing budget and chose to spend it on free shipping they created value, or a “free prize”, for their customers.

Godin’s notion of a “free prize” reminds me of “Lagniappe”, a Louisiana French word which means “a little something extra”, as in, “Enjoy this lagniappe…on us!”. An example of a lagniappe is when you buy a book and the bookstore gives you a beautiful bookmark as a gift, or when you buy a cappuccino and the waiter adds a couple of gourmet wafers. When you give your customers “a little something extra”, they’ll want to tell others about you.

Ask yourself: “What free prize could I provide my customers, my readers or my listeners?”

Tell a Compelling Story

Become a master storyteller; tell an engaging and exciting story that those you’re targeting want to hear.  If you can describe the benefits of your offering–whether it’s a product, a service, art work, your blog, and so on–in the way of an anecdote, then you’ll enable prospective clients to mentally ‘try on’ or visualize what you’re trying to sell.

In addition, your story should fit into people’s worldview: French wine tastes better than California wine, and it tastes even better in a twenty-dollar glass as opposed to a paper cup.  At the same time, sushi tastes better when it’s made by a Japanese chef.

As another example, the person who buys free range chicken and organic milk thinks of themselves as caring about the environment and leading a healthy style, so frame the story around that perception.  Reconnect the buyer to the joy of owning your product.

In his book All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World, Godin doesn’t really argue that marketers are liars, but that they’re story tellers that tell stories that consumers want to believe and that support their values, ideals, and aspirations.  Marketers frame their stories in a way that will appeal to their customers.  So, what compelling story can you tell others about your work?

Conclusion

Have a remarkable idea.  Stick firmly to the idea that will make you the best in the world in your chosen area and get rid of anything that is extraneous and simply getting in the way.  Target your product or service to a small group of early adopters by telling them a compelling story framed in their view of the world.  Give these early adopters the royal treatment by adding a free prize inside.  The small group of early adopters will help break your idea into the mainstream by spreading it like a virus.  Make something happen.

(“Purple Cow”; courtesy of juliaf)

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