Meatball Sundae

Whole industries are being transformed by the way ideas spread and how prospects and consumers interact. Bestselling business author Seth Godin explains how to become an organization for a new generation.

American Express could have become PayPal, but they watched the opportunity go by. Fedex uses technology to make shipping easier for the customer; UPS uses technology to make shipping easier for UPS. Who's winning? Google has broken the world into tiny bits. No one visits a website's home page anymore; they go in the back door, to just the place Google sent them.

New Marketing, whose tools include things like MySpace, You Tube, websites, permission marketing, cable TV, and viral techniques, is reshaping our world. But many companies try to use the tools without first getting their organization and products in sync with them. The result: what Seth Godin calls a andquot;meatball sundae.andquot; A big, ineffective mess.

In his trademark styleand#8212;clear, accessible, jargon-free, and full of real-life examplesand#8212;Godin reviews how marketing used to work and explains how to use the New Marketing to become a better organization: faster, more flexible, and even more fun.

andquot;Gotta get me some of that New Marketing. Bring me blogs, e-mail, YouTube videos, MySpace pages, Google AdWords...I don't care, as long as it's shiny and new.andquot;

WAIT. According to bestselling author Seth Godin, all these tactics are like the toppings at an ice cream parlor. If you start with ice cream, adding cherries and hot fudge and whipped cream will make it taste great. But if you start with a bowl of meatballs...yuck! As traditional marketing fades away, the new tools seem irresistible. But they don't work as well for boring brands (andquot;meatballsandquot;) that might still be profitable but don't attract word of mouth.

Meatball Sundaeis the definitive guide to the fourteen trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don't. Godin doesn't pretend that it's easy to get your products, marketing messages, and internal systems in sync. But he'll convince you that it's worth the effort.

SETH GODIN is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. His book Permission Marketingwas an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a FortuneBest Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on The New York Timesbusiness book bestseller list. He lives in Westchester County, New York.SETH GODIN is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. His book Permission Marketingwas an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a FortuneBest Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on The New York Timesbusiness book bestseller list. He lives in Westchester County, New York.