14 Trends of New Marketing by Seth Godin

New age marketing maven Seth Godin in action (courtesy of ashbuckles)

What is the future of marketing like? How can your company ride these trends?

To find out, I consulted my favourite marketing guru Seth Godin and his recently published book Meatball Sundae.

Also called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week magazine, Seth has been highly prolific in sharing his thoughts and ideas on how marketing should be shaped.

The main premise behind Seth’s ideas? That the old advertising-led, “holler and they will come” world of mass marketing is dead.

However, you can’t just plonk new media channels like Youtube, Facebook, MySpace and blogs over a traditionally mass produced product.

Instead, you need to revamp your entire organisation – culture, manufacturing, logistics, service – to fit the new world of making products and services that people desire.

So what are the 14 trends?

1) Direct Communication and Commerce between Producers and Consumers – People are increasingly buying direct from the makers, hence eliminating the intermediaries. Similarly, they want to be able to speak directly to the guy in charge.

2) Amplification of the Voice of the Consumer and Independent Authorities – This is what was termed the “Echo Chamber Effect” in Naked Conversations (Scoble and Israel), which magnifies and prolongs both positive and more often, negative feedback. Beware of what you do or say because there are no longer walls in the digital domain.

3) Need for an Authentic Story as the Number of Sources Increases – A cardinal rule in PR is to be sure that you have your facts right from the onset. Don’t fudge the truth because it will eventually come out. More importantly, lead rather than be led (especially by your detractors).

4) Extremely Short Attention Spans due to Clutter – Nobody is going to read through huge tomes anymore, and people want things in small bite-sized pieces. I guess this is also why Godin’s easy-to-read books are growing in popularity!

5) The Long Tail – This seminal idea by Chris Anderson dictates that single product domination is fading in most markets. Customers are rewarding companies that can provide diverse choices and cater to increasing tiny micro-niches.

6) Outsourcing – Probably nothing new to most of us. However, do beware of the issue of ethics and also hopping onto the bandwagon. You can’t outsource (at least for now) a unique and enduring service experience.

7) Google and the Dicing of Everything – The phenomenon of Google has changed the game in the consumer marketplace. People are not buying stuff in bundles or packages anymore. Instead, you need to take your products apart and sell widget by widget.

8) Infinite Channels of Communication – The chaos of conversations will get louder and louder, with the proliferation of multiple channels online and offline. To leverage on this, you will need to make your product worth talking about in the first place, as opposed to shouting out loud about a merely mediocre product.

9) Direct Communication and Commerce between Consumers and Consumers – Most of us would know the e-Bay effect (or Yahoo Auctions), where folks are increasingly buying from and sharing with each other.

10) The Shifts in Scarcity and Abundance – What used to be scarce like hard-drive storage, manual labour, long-distance phone service, and shelf-space, has now become abundant through globalisation and technology. Companies that get it will leverage the new scarcity – spare time (believe me this is totally true!), attention, trust, and sufficiently trained workers.

11) The Triumph of Big Ideas – Forget about Kaizen and continuous improvement. Instead look towards creating something – a product, service or experience – that will spark off the imagination.

12) The Shift From “How Many” to “Who” – This is related to the shift away from eyeballs, share of voice and GRPs to the key segment that you are reaching to. Speaking to the right audiences are far more important than speaking to a massive one.

13) The Wealthy Are Like Us – A phenomenon known as the “democratisation of wealth”, this trend looks at how people are no longer going for the middle ground. It is either something very cheap and affordable for “commodities” or an exclusive and premium experience. The bell-curve has shifted.

14) New Gatekeepers, No Gatekeepers – With the porosity of multiple media channels helmed by multiple messengers, one’s organisation must be flexible and adept enough to engage them. Nobody holds the golden key anymore, and success only comes if you learn to work not only with the traditional media channels, but new ones as well.

While I tend to agree with the general direction that Godin is pointing at, I am a little sceptical about some of his points like the fact that people no longer buy stuff in packages. Perhaps these points may be true in the US, but in Singapore (and maybe even Asia), bundling is still a pretty important strategy. Moreover, we still need a critical mass in the numbers reached, even if we are talking to the right audience. A market of one isn’t a market that can sustain an enterprise for whatever period.

What are your views on the New Marketing? Will it work in Singapore?