Meatball Sundae

In his book Seth Godin tries to give insights about what happens when companies try to use social media to sell commodity products. He refers to the commodity products as the meatballs, the social media as the frosting and the cherry and he claims that these two don’t mix very well ergo forming a meatball sundae.

He outlines 14 trends which are shaping the ways in which products and ideas are sold:

1-Direct communication between producers and consumers
2. Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
3. Need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
4. Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
5. The Long Tail
6. Outsourcing
7. Google and the dicing of everything
8. Infinite channels of communication
9. Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
10. The shifts in scarcity and abundance
11. The triumph of big ideas
12. The shift from “how many” to “who”
13. The wealthy are like us
14. New gatekeepers, no gatekeepers

The part I found the most interesting though was the permission asset concept.

The author says that due to abundance in information and the possibility to get anything at 1 click of the mouse, scarcity is changing owner. We don’t have scarcity in products anymore but we have scarcity in customer attention instead. The best way to adapt to this new reality is to deliver anticipated and relevant messages to people who want to get the products and not to everyone.

I think it would be useful for everyone of us to have information in products he/she is interested in. This would prevent our brains from being bombarded with any kind of information.

Regards

S.K.