A dive into Godin’s Disruptive Marketing
Unorthodox vs Traditional Marketing
Seth Godin is the Swami of marketing. An intellectual who started challenging the conventional marketing since the advent of internet. He saw a revolution was imminent and wanted marketers to plan ahead to remain relevant and impactful in the upcoming omnichannel world.
Godin’s radical approach has shaken the world of marketing to its core. He is almost a God-like figure, omnipresent in every marketing course and talks.
He is actually what he wants the brands to be, “Unique” and “Irreplaceable”.
To see how Godin’s views drastically differ from the traditional teachings in marketing, let’s compare his ideas to a more conventional course book called Marketing: The Core by Roger Kerin and Steven Hartley.
Disclaimer: Kerin and Hartley have done a great job in formulating a nearly perfect step wise textbook that engages the reader in active learning and helps cement the ideas and steps of marketing by featuring real people cases and companies throughout its entirety.
Having said that… Let’s ARRAIGN it!
1. It’s a noisy world
We started in a silent world where everyone had their eyes hooked to one or two mediums of information (TV, radio, newspaper, billboards). We didn’t only watch or listen to what they had to show or say, we very much believed them… and trusted them.
It was less confusing and less competitive. This changed when internet came into the picture. Ads that were unavoidable became skippable. It got harder to get someone’s attention. Money could no longer buy clout, and innovation became more essential than ever.
Seth promotes the same notion: Be unique, be trustworthy, don’t compete, tell a story worth telling and tell it when given the permission to do so, also don’t tell it to everyone: it’s not for everyone.
Godin wants the marketers to be proud of their creation. He wants the user to choose the brand and not be coerced into choosing it. He wants the marketer to be brave enough to reach only a number of people that really need its services and be braver to tell others… No! It’s not for you. This will not only concentrate the brand’s efforts and resources in the right place but also develop its integrity.
Kerin on the other hand is okay with brands to generate the noise they need to make to reach their target market. They layout steps and provide insights into the consumer behavior and their buying practices which is substantiated by the data.
The text doesn’t recognize internet as revolutionary as Godin’s does. It comes off as just another medium for marketers to advertise their products on.
2. The key is to understand your customers
Godin in his book sometimes takes help of case studies and personal experience in order to make a point. One of such cases was VisionSpring’s philanthropic venture in an Indian village. A brand changing its vision at the spot to accommodate the buyers.
What the author wanted to highlight was that we all are stuck in our minds and version of stories we like or prefer. As a marketer you need to get into your consumers’ shoes and see the brand from their eyes. Abandon your stance and value theirs. Make them an offer they cannot deny. Something they want to hear and not what you want to tell them.
Tap into their desires, needs, stories and offer something they will feel proud to be a part of.
Kerin’s text again takes a simpler approach. With the Post-it Flag Highlighter example, they want to demonstrate the journey to identify a need and make a product based on that need and market it strategically, so it reaches the right audience.
The catch here is not understanding a customer but to put them into categories according to “what YOU think they want or would do” so they are easier to approach.
3. Smallest Viable Market
Godin thinks if you are for everyone, you are ordinary. You will lose your following as soon as something better comes in the market. You have to have people that would choose you no matter what. You then won’t have to waste your energy on placating every person, just those who would give you the lifetime value and lifelong attention rather than those who come to you at your peak and never return.
A marketer should realize its competition and strive to be relevant to a small number of people. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but that is the reality of anything that exists at the mercy of the people. If you are replaceable, you will be replaced sooner or later. What’s a better example than once most successful Nokia.
Kerin on the other hand, goes with the belief that inclusivity of a brand can make it a success. Coppertone and Chobani yogurt have introduced a variety of the products over the years. In fact, Coppertone started as a brand selling tanning products but is now famous for its sun protection products just because of their attempts to understand and accommodate the changing needs of their buyers.
Godin is of the view that a brand should bound its handful of consumers under a spell by providing something they can’t otherwise have but Kerin advises to keep a flexible approach and keep communicating with their customers and make offers they demand.
A takeaway here is that Coppertone is now struggling to maintain its position in a highly competitive market of skincare. Whereas the brand JCPenney, Godin mentions, does not compete at all and values mutual respect (of brand and customers). And that’s how it redeemed itself and gained the respect and attention of its consumers.
4. People like us do things like this
According to Godin, people value the sense of belonging. They are well aware of their surroundings and make decisions according to it. A marketer should take the same approach and form a tribe that would not only show up because it wants to, it should show up because it needs to do so in order to feel liked and worthy in its respective surroundings.
Kerin emphasizes on the personal and learning experience of an individual to be the integral part of the decision making. The third party opinion is very much there but is subtler and comes in the form of advice or word-of-mouth.
Though both authors highlight the value of word-of-mouth, Kerin showcases it as the only role a third person has along with their slight behavioral disruption at the moment of making a purchase.
5. Make a change
Seth Godin sees brands as a bus that can take its riders in a new direction and blaze a trail where no one ever did. But it’s ignorant to think that everyone wants to embark on this journey. Identify who you want to change or who would accept the change and start there. Be accountable to them. Gain their trust and offer something they would actually appreciate. Your change does not have to be big or widespread. Know what is enough.
Marketing: The core is however, all about the bigger brands. The brands that make drastic changes. They might lose their place eventually but they keep striving for the bigger buck.
For example, Chobani yogurt changed the idea of exclusive healthy eating by introducing a healthier version of one of a kind yogurt. Their goal was to reach maximum people, not just health conscious consumers. They could have stayed in the healthy food aisle but they didn’t and pioneered the big change of inclusive healthy eating.
Both books have a different outlook on success. Whenever Kerin wants to highlight success, he mentions the revenue generated. The bigger the company the more successful it is. However, the devil is in the details. Every success we read about in the Kerin’s text has a summative sentence stating how competition has hurt their standing in the market.
Godin’s strategy starts at this very point where the actual problem of staying viable begins. He in all this chapters reiterates the mantra of creating value that could last forever.
It would be safe to say the according to Godin, “Size doesn’t matter!”
There would be more to say about this marketing strategy tussle where Godin keeps narrating his Swami like philosophies and Kerin keeps providing us with a long stretch of framework of marketing.
So stay tuned for a part 2…
In the meantime, read this article about why another successful marketing Guru “Mark Schaefer” calls Seth Godin’s strategy “creepy”
