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Unleashing The Ideavirus

by Seth Godin


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About Book

Amazon.com
Treat a product or service like a human or computer virus, contends online promotion specialist Seth Godin, and it just might become one. In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin describes ways to set any viable commercial concept loose among those who are most likely to catch it--and then stand aside as these recipients become infected and pass it on to others who might do the same. "The future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other," he writes. "Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."

Godin believes that a solid idea is the best route to success in the new century, but one "that just sits there is worthless." Through the magic of "word of mouse," however, the Internet offers a unique opportunity for interested individuals to transmit ideas quickly and easily to others of like mind. Taking up where his previous book left off, Godin explains in great detail how ideaviruses have been launched by companies such as Napster, Blue Mountain Arts, GeoCities, and Hotmail. He also describes "sneezers" (influential people who spread them), "hives" (populations most willing to receive them), and "smoothness" (the ease with which sneezers can transmit them throughout a hive). In all, an infectious and highly recommended read. --Howard Rothman

From The Industry Standard
The Internet industry has been enamored of buzz-based marketing ever since venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson coined the phrase "viral marketing" in 1997 to describe Hotmail's strategy of tagging every e-mail message with a promotion for its service. The self-replicating promotion helped the company achieve an epidemic growth rate of zero to 12 million users in a mere 18 months. Since then, viral marketing has propelled everything from Napster to The Blair Witch Project to legendary success.

Even with all the buzz about buzz, though, many Internet companies still pour the bulk of their marketing budgets into ill-conceived TV advertising (who could forget January's orgy of dot-com expenditures on Super Bowl ads?) and other ineffective channels, like banner ads. Depending on whose numbers you use, last year online and offline companies spent $3.5 billion to $4.6 billion on Net ads. Yet, according to Nielsen NetRatings, average click-through rates for banner ads have fallen to a pitiful half a percent.

There has to be a better way. With investors increasingly focusing on profits, the time is right to do more than just talk about viral marketing. And here to lead the rally are two new primers on the subject - Seth Godin's flashy Unleashing the Ideavirus and Emanuel Rosen's more pedantic but meatier The Anatomy of Buzz.

Both agree on the basic tenets. Instead of blindly (and expensively) advertising to mass audiences, companies should focus on creating buzz among key potential customers - early adopters - and let them market to everybody else.

Godin, who fills his book with infectious analogies, calls these folks "sneezers," whereas Rosen dubs them "network hubs." They could be celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, influential members of a particular industry or ordinary people involved in their neighborhoods, schools, church groups or companies who consciously and consistently spread the word about new things they encounter.

The trick is to reward such efforts. Give away samples or discounts. Create affiliate programs a la Amazon or run promotions that reward early customers for signing up new users. Post testimonials from happy customers on your Web site. All simple stuff, but according to Godin, "too much work for most sites."

Both authors warn that none of these efforts will work with a lousy product. Hotmail, Polaroid's iZone camera, the new Volkswagen Beetle and the Palm are all top-notch products - they're simple to understand and use, they work and look great - that benefited from good buzz. Godin, who founded an online promotions company he sold to Yahoo and authored last year's Permission Marketing [see "Permission Marketing"], calls these killer products "ideaviruses" because they're easy to launch and spread quickly from person to person until they're ubiquitous, like Napster or The Sopranos.

If you have a great product, give buzz a boost by first giving it away or selling it dirt cheap, a lesson many Net companies already apply. As Rosen relates, the publisher of Cold Mountain gave away 4,000 galley copies to bookstore owners and others to help make the Civil War novel an unexpected hit that eventually sold 1.6 million hardcover copies. Microsoft gave away 450,000 copies of Windows 95 before the software was commercially available.

Of course, you can't give away everything. So how to make money? Aim low. Pick a small market with no established leader and use buzz to dominate it before anybody else does. "If you can fill a vacuum aggressively and permanently, it is far easier to extract money," Godin writes. The jury is still out, however, on whether that theory will fly with standalone online retailers and companies such as Napster that don't charge for their services.

Because the Net speeds up communication exponentially, dot-com companies have come to rely solely on online means for creating buzz. Big mistake, Rosen says. For buzz to work, companies need a multichannel strategy. Cisco, he points out, prides itself on connecting with customers online, but also arranges 1,000 offline seminars a year for potential customers, holds even more events for current customers and attends dozens of trade shows.

Likewise, don't rest on your laurels. Once you've successfully used buzz to launch a product or service, leverage it to launch your next big thing.

There may be no such thing as bad publicity, Rosen cautions, but negative buzz can be lethal. Apple was vilified for the Newton, as was long-dead company Momenta for its early '90s pen computer - the device was so buggy that people who got free demo units ditched them, something even a $40 million marketing budget couldn't rectify. For that reason, both authors suggest that companies actively track what people are saying about their products through all media, including on consumer feedback Web sites such as PlanetFeedback.com or Epinions.com.

Both Godin and Rosen also pay homage to Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary theorist who first came up with the concept of the meme, an idea that replicates itself like a living organism, growing and evolving as it passes from one person to another.

But while they cover much of the same intellectual territory, they diverge radically in execution. Godin, an unabashed self-promoter and online marketing industry fixture, offers, hands down, the faster, sexier read, with pictures, to-do lists and up-to-the-minute examples. But he fails to provide much historical perspective. He calls his slim, 197-page book a "manifesto," penned a cover story about it for Fast Company's August issue and made it available on the Web a month before its September publication date. In notices posted between pages of the online version, he encourages readers to "Steal This Idea" by downloading the text file and circulating it to friends. As of mid-August, Godin claimed more than 400,000 copies had been downloaded.

If Godin's Ideavirus is fast food, Rosen's tome is an eight-course meal. Rosen stuffs his 303-page book, due in October, with examples of good and bad buzz taken from 40 years of innovations inside and outside the technology industry, and offers copious scientific research to back up his assumptions and conclusions. He includes extensive interview footnotes for each chapter and a lengthy bibliography.

Such an approach is not surprising coming from the former marketing VP who helped launch EndNote, a program that helps academics compile the bibliographic material found at the end of scholarly papers. (It eventually sold 200,000 copies - mainly by word of mouth.) Though Rosen's is the better researched and structured of the two books, it's a drier read that would have benefited from a dash of Godin's peppy prose style.

Together, both books make a convincing case for viral marketing - just keep in mind that no amount of buzz-building will turn a dog into a winner. And tell a friend.


Michelle V. Rafter is a contributing writer in Los Angeles.

From AudioFile
With some hokum, some wisdom, and a great deal of phrase-making, the author discusses effective marketing, which he likens to unleashing an idea virus. The implications of this disease metaphor are bone-chilling, but the author is only packaging some conventional ideas into new mumbo jumbo. He reads gracelessly but inoffensively. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Guy Kawasaki, CEO, garage.com, and author, Rules for Revolutionaries
"This is the only (idea)virus that will save you time and make you money."

Chris Meyer, director, Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, and co-author of Blur
". . . Unleashing the IdeaVirus informs, instructs, and entertains, offering the reader both roadmap and owner's manual for the car."

Alan M. Webber, founding editor, Fast Company
". . . whatever Seth is selling is catching -- and if you spend time with him, you'll come down with it."

Doc Searls, author, The Cluetrain Manifesto
"Seth not only gets it, he gives it as well. Unleashing the Ideavirus is living, livid, vivid proof."

Review
Chris Meyer co-author, Blur Seth Godin has unique clarity about what's going on in marketing -- the futility of mass, the importance of contagion, the central role of permission. Unleashing the Ideavirus informs, instructs, and entertains.

Book Description
Turn your ideas into epidemics by helping your customers do the marketing for you. Seth Godin is an admans worst nightmare. He has made a career of exposing the limitations of traditional marketing methods while offering his own visionary solutions. He has also demonstrated the principles of the IdeaVirus firsthand: More than 250,000 copies of his e-book, Unleashing the IdeaVirus, have spread throughout the Web for free. Napster, Hotmail, GeoCities, and Volkswagen are just a few of the businesses that have successfully launched their products with an IdeaVirus by letting customers get to know and communicate with each other. This customer-to-customer dialogue spreads like a virus, costs companies next to nothing, and could signal the end to marketing as we know it. Now Godin shows how any business can unleash an IdeaVirus and profit from it.

From the Publisher
WHAT THE SNEEZERS ARE SAYING ABOUT SETH GODIN AND UNLEASHING THE IDEAVIRUS

“When Seth Godin sneezes, watch out! Godin is always challenging us to think at least as fast as the world is changing. Unleashing the Ideavirus is his next dare.”

—Steve Riggio Vice Chairman, Barnes & Noble.com

“This is the only (idea) virus that will save you time and make you money.”

—Guy Kawasaki CEO, garage.com, and author, Rules for Revolutionaries

“Seth not only gets it, he gives it as well. Unleashing the Ideavirus is living, livid, vivid proof.”

—Doc Searls co-author, The Cluetrain Manifesto

“Seth Godin has unique clarity about what’s going on in marketing-the futility of mass, the importance of contagion, the central role of permission. Unleashing the Ideavirus informs, instructs, and entertains, offering the reader both roadmap and owner’s manual for the car.”

—Chris Meyer Director, Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, and co-author, Blur

“If you’re lucky, whatever Seth is selling is catching-and if you spend time with him, you’ll come down with it.”

—Alan M. Webber Founding Editor, Fast Company

About the Author
Seth Godin is the author of numerous books, including the national bestseller, Permission Marketing. He was the founder of Yoyodyne, the first direct marketer on the Internet, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 1998. Godin served as Vice President of Direct Marketing for Yahoo! before leaving early in 2000 to devote time to writing and speaking. Godin serves as a Flatiron Fellow, advising Flatiron Partners, a leading Internet-focused venture capital firm based in New York, and is a regular columnist for Fast Company magazine.

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