A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have joined tribes, be they religious, ethnic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger and enabling new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten million who care about a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

Who is going to lead all these tribes? The Web can do amazing things, but it can’t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals—people just like you who have passion about something. Anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at their fingertips.

If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Ignore an opportunity to lead and you risk turning into a “sheepwalker”—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don’t do very well these days.

Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers. . . . It's not easy, but it's easier than you probably imagine.
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“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.”

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 (“meatballs”) that might still be profitable but don’t attract word of mouth, such as Cheerios, Ford trucks, Barbie dolls, or Budweiser. When Anheuser-Busch spends $40 million on an online network called BudTV, that’s a meatball sundae. It leads to no new Bud drinkers, just a bad case of indigestion.

Meatball Sundae is 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.

The winners aren’t just annoying start-ups run by three teenagers who never had a real job. You’ll also meet older companies that have adapted brilliantly, such as Blendtec, a thirty-year-old blender maker. It now produces “Will it blend?” videos that demolish golf balls, Coke cans, iPhones, and much more. For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube.

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....

How to find the “soft innovation” that will make your product, service, school, church, or career worth talking about

We live in an era of too much noise, too much clutter, too many choices, and too much spam. And as Seth Godin’s 200,000-copy bestseller Purple Cow taught the business world, the old ways of marketing simply don’t work anymore. The best way to sell anything these days is through word of mouth—and the only real way to get word of mouth is to create something remarkable.

Free Prize Inside, the sequel to Purple Cow, explains how to do just that. ItÂ’s jammed with practical ideas you can use right now to make your product or service remarkable, so that it will virtually sell itself.

Remember when cereal came with a free prize inside? Even if you already liked the cereal, it was the little plastic toy that made it irresistible. Godin explains how you can think of a bonus that will make your customers feel just as excited, no matter what business youÂ’re in. Consider these free prizes:
•?The Tupperware party, which turned buying plastic bowls into a social event
•?Flintstones vitamins, which turned a serious product into something fun
•?The free change-counting machine at every Commerce Bank branch
•?The little blue box from Tiffany, which makes people happy before they even open it

This book offers a way to create free prizes quickly, cheaply, and reliably—and persuade others in your organization to help you bring them to life....

The book that sparked a marketing revolution.

"This is a subversive book. It says that the marketer is not -- and ought not to be -- at the center of successful marketing. The customer should be. Are you ready for that?" --From the Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point.

Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer. Godin calls this powerful customer-to- customer dialogue the ideavirus, and cheerfully eggs marketers on to create an environment where their ideas can replicate and spread.

In lively, detail, Godin looks at the ways companies such as PayPal, Hotmail, GeoCities, even Volkswagen have successfully launched ideaviruses. He offers a "recipe" for creating your own ideavirus, identifies the key factors in the successful spread of an ideavirus (powerful sneezers, hives, a clear vector, a smooth, friction-free transmission), and shows how any business, large or small, can use ideavirus marketing to succeed in a world that just doesn't want to hear it anymore from the traditional marketers....

The classic bestseller that taught the business world that safe is risky; very good is bad; and above all, you're either remarkable or invisible

In 2002, Seth Godin asked a simple question that turned the business world upside down: What do Starbucks and JetBlue and Apple and Dutch Boy and Hard Candy have that other companies don't? How did they confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind formerly tried-and-true brands?

Godin showed that the traditional Ps that marketers had used for decades to get their products noticed-pricing, promotion, publicity, packaging, etc.-weren't working anymore. Marketers were ignoring the most important P of all: the Purple Cow.

Cows, after you've seen one or two or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though . . . now that would be something. Godin defines a Purple Cow as anything phenomenal, counterintuitive, exciting . . . remarkable. Every day, consumers ignore a lot of brown cows, but you can bet they won't ignore a Purple Cow.

You can't paint your product or service purple after the fact. You have to be inherently purple or no one will talk about you. Godin urges you to emulate companies that are consistently remarkable in everything they do, which drives explosive word of mouth.

Purple Cow launched a movement to create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place. Now this expanded edition includes dozens of new examples from readers who've taken the message to heart.

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Seth Godin's three essential questions for every marketer:
"What's you story?"
"Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?"
"Is it true?"

All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche is vastly superior to a $36,000 Volkswagen that's virtually the same car. We believe that $125 sneakers make our feet feel better--and look cooler--than a $25 brand. And believing it makes it true.

As Seth Godin showed in this controversial book, great marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story--a story we want to believe, whether it's factual or not. In a world where most people have an infinite number of choices and no time to make them, every organization is a marketer, and all marketing is about telling stories.

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, or Fiji water or the iPod.

But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians.

But for the rest of us, it's time to embrace the power of the story. As Godin writes, "Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn't invent storytelling. They just perfected it."

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A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature.

Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?

The Web can do amazing things, but it can’t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals— people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.

If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.

If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a “sheepwalker”—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don’t do very well these days.

Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you think....