Seth Godin's Reading List

"First, it’s funny. Funny even if you’ve never worked in an office, but even funnier if you have. Barry gives us an insightful look into what big company marketers in an ad-driven world actually do all day. Just as Soul of a New Machine did for computers, Syrup helps an outsider see the pressures, the thrills and the absurdity of it all. Well, like Syrup , Mad Men is fictional—but the pressure of measurement and survival and affiliation is real. Marketers create change, and we do it out of nothing much more than a desire for forward motion and the confidence to act ‘as if’. Multiply that by the corporate rate race and you’re likely to see bad behavior along the way. Marketers use advertising, but it’s very much a specialization, in that all great advertisers are advertisers first. They might also be good at marketing, but they have a sense of voice, a confidence and a bias for buying attention that is special."

"Bernadette helped modern marketers see that stories are a choice. That’s a huge leap. Of course it’s true, but it means that we have to spend as much time and energy building and living a story as we do creating the products and services that match that story. If you fit in, you’re invisible. That’s what camouflage is for. There are many ways to stand apart, of course, and what Jiwa is arguing for is not simply standing out, but standing out in a way that resonates. Because people are busy. They are unlikely to care enough about your product to talk about it. But they’re certainly interested in themselves, and if you can resonate with who I am and more important, who I seek to be, then I’m on your team, and vice versa. Every single company that you can think of has done this! That’s why you can think of them. Lots of people sell sneakers. But if I ask you to name a sneaker company, you’ll name one that told a story well—or spectacularly poorly, which is almost a version of well."

"Nobody had written the definitive book of the post-advertising age. It needed to be able to explain everything from Airbnb to Trump to the success of Instagram. If there’s going to be a coherent, unified theory of marketing, it will not only explain what we see, but also give us the tools to create our own change in the world. I know that marketing is powerful. I refuse to let people off the hook, simply because they’re following orders or want to make some money. If we’re going to do marketing, we’re going to make change. I want us to see what we’re doing and invest the emotional labor to do the right thing, because it matters. Arlie Hochschild most famously used the term in the 1980s; it has been used to describe dumping a certain kind of work on a certain kind of worker—in her case, she was writing about flight attendants. “If we’re going to do marketing, we’re going to make change” I view it in a broader sense, though, and see it as a privilege, not a misogynistic trap. The alternative—physical labor—is not something I’d be good at, and it’s not something I’d find rewarding either. But showing up as a professional to bring emotion and guts and insight to bear—to solve a problem and to help someone move forward—I view that as an opportunity to do real work. People aren’t nearly suspicious enough of marketing. Marketing that manipulates can prey on our fears and our dreams and our prejudices to persuade us to do things we’ll regret. On the other hand, marketing creates a bottle of wine we love, an outfit that’s our favorite and a cause we’d die for. Let’s see it for what it is. You find it impossible to believe that halitosis was invented? Have you noticed how some cultures go to enormous lengths not to show a stranger their teeth, hiding behind hands whenever they eat or even laugh? Or the amount of time and money people in some culture spend grooming their hair? Or the attention paid to body distance between strangers in various locales? It’s all invented ! To imagine that some of it is invented by a profit-seeking marketer isn’t that hard. “People aren’t nearly suspicious enough of marketing” Happy Hour was invented. Bumming a cigarette was invented, as was tapping the ends of the pack . . . Google it. And yes, the Vietnam War was invented too. It’s what humans do. We tell stories that change others, and sometimes we do it for selfish reasons."

"Back when the fax was a new technology, a young entrepreneur set out to create a new brand. And, 30 years later, that brand is still around. The book consists of a series of faxes back and forth with his investors, followed by a breakneck narrative of what it took to build a brand from scratch. “The technology is ancient, but the story is timeless. This book changed my life” Even though the technology is ancient, the story is timeless. This book changed my life all those years ago. Will is the real deal. His narrative isn’t tacked on because he thought he could make money. Instead, he’s seeking to make enough money to have his narrative come true."

"Imagine if a time-traveler wrote a book about our future in 1999. And imagine that he gave it away to anyone who wanted to read it , and that even after 20 years, it’s still a road map to the future. Kevin Kelly might or might not be from the future, but this is that book. Every once in a while, when I need a new and original breakthrough idea, I just open Kevin’s book from 20 years ago! Because marketing is what we do! Not the ads we run. Marketing is the ratchets, the viralities, the side effects and effects. Marketing is the system we build. And Kevin’s book is the map to the system of the future. Sometimes I hang out with babies. These are little kids who can’t walk or talk. Amazingly, every one of them is a great marketer. Every one of them knows how to get their parents to love them, to hear them and to help them grow up. We never lose these magical skills. Instead, we’re brainwashed into believing we don’t have a voice. Of course we do. You don’t have to give a TED talk to be a marketer. In fact, you already are one."