Meatball Sundaes Are Delicious

Posted on Monday March, 3 2008 | 4 Comments

Seth Godin's latest zany title, Meatball Sundae was everything we have come to expect from the Godin marketing machine. Here are some of the most memorable ideas from the book and my interpretations.

New Marketing Favors Some Approaches Over Others
Seth describes organizations who are used to cranking out meatballs, or commodity products who then try to throw some new marketing on top of their previously successful traditional marketing. If organizations want to adapt to the new world customers live in then they should fundamentally change their organization to align with the new environment.

Mass marketers can no longer ignore the individual consumer as they have for the past hundred years.
Jeff Jarvis’ Dell Hell rant showed a few influential people can use new media to wreck havoc on a brand.

Companies waste billions of dollars interrupting strangers, instead of building a permission asset.
Pets.com used every tactic they could find, even sock puppets to interupt people who didn't want to hear from them. Dailycandy.com has hundreds of thousands who willingly hear their message in return for useful email newsletters on style. Making noise does not provide the highest returns.

Things that used to be scarce like manual labor, airtime, and shelf space are now abundant. Things that used to be abundant like spare time, attention, and trust are now scarce.
The world changing means the way people allocate their time and resources have changed. Marketers must also change their organizations if they want to thrive.

A big idea can spread so far and fast that the market leader cannot stop it.
New media has exponentially accelerated how fast ideas can spread through the population. In the old marketing system, manufacturing and distribution could give the leader an advantage for decades. Today an big idea, like Dell Hell can threaten Dell's market power immediately.

Dell’s Idea Storm

Marketing Obesity

Questioning Assumptions