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Tag: Seth Godin

  • Seth Godin on The Difference Between a Logo and a Brand

    Seth Godin on The Difference Between a Logo and a Brand

    Enterprise marketing legend Seth Godin says that the value of a brand is measured by how much extra you will pay above the substitute. He says that if Nike opened a hotel everybody would know what it would be like because they have a distinct brand. On the other hand, he says, if Hyatt or some other big hotel chains came out with sneakers we would have no clue what they would be like because they don’t have brands.

    Seth Godin, author and marketing expert, recently discussed Nike and brand value on Behind the Brand with Bryan Elliott:

    The Difference Between a Logo and a Brand

    Let’s talk about the difference between a logo and a brand. Companies spend way too much time on their logo, just like people on YouTube spend way too much time on their hair… I’m told. If Nike opened a hotel I think we would be able to guess pretty accurately what it would be like. If Hyatt came out with sneakers we’d have no clue because Hyatt doesn’t have a brand, they have a logo. If I swapped the signs on a hotel at that price point you couldn’t tell. If you were a Marriott, if you were a Hilton, Hyatt, the hallway, the room, I don’t know where I am. No brand.

    What it means to have a brand is you’ve made a promise to people, they have expectations, it’s a shorthand, what should I expect the next time? If that is distinct you’ve earned something. If it’s not distinct, let’s admit you make a commodity and you’re trying to charge just a little bit extra for peace of mind. The problem that Hyatt and Hilton and Marriott and the rest have is sort by price. If I go online now to find a hotel it’s really simple, sort by price. Why would I pay $200 extra to go a block away? I don’t.

    What’s the Value of a Brand

    What’s the value of a brand? The value of a brand is how much extra am I paying above the substitute. If I’m not paying extra you don’t have a brand. When we think about what brands ought to do to move forward, the most important thing is to not worry about your slogan, your spokesperson, they’re wrapping. Its to worry about the substance, work that matters for people who care. Find the people who care, the smallest viable group you can live with, and figure out how to give them work that matters.

    There are hotels, these new chains of mini-boutique hotels, that charge double what a Hyatt might charge, for less. But it’s only less by the Hyatt measure. It’s way more by the measure of someone who cares about with the people in the lobby look like or who cares about how hip it feels to walk into the bar. They’re investing not in… oh you get a room with three power outlets. They’re investing in throwing a party in a place where you also can sleep while you’re on the road. Those hotels have a brand and those hotels are some that some people pay extra for but almost no one in the scheme of things.

  • We Don’t Sell Products, We Sell Change

    We Don’t Sell Products, We Sell Change

    “I actually believe that we don’t sell products, we sell change,” says Tiffani Bova, Customer Growth and Transformation Evangelist at Salesforce. Bova was interviewing legendary speaker and author Seth Godin when she made that comment.

    “What great marketers and great sales people and great organizations do is only one thing, as Michael Schrage has written about, we make change happen,” responded Godin. “My favorite example of this is Harley Davidson. Harley turns disrespected outsiders into respected insiders. That’s what they do. They make half of their revenue licensing their logo, because the logo, the totum, the uniform is a symbol of the change. You don’t even have to have a motorcycle to be changed by the brand.”

    This is the company’s internal marketing positioning statement that illustrates the point that Bova and Godin are making:

    The only motorcycle manufacturer
    That makes big, loud motorcycles
    For macho guys (and “macho wannabes”)
    Mostly in the United States
    Who want to join a gang of cowboys
    In an era of decreasing personal freedom.

    Per Inc. Magazine

    Godin also talked colorfully about sales, marketing and social media:

    “It all comes down to what story does the sales person tell himself when he shows up at work every morning. Trust and awareness are the two key things here. What we want isn’t email, we want me-mail. What we want isn’t to hear about you, we want to hear about us. We want to hear about our dreams, where we are going. Salespeople who get that, who show up at work everyday intent on making that happen, they don’t have a social media problem.”

  • Apple Turns Down Apps for Requiring Registration?

    According to the Next Web, Apple may be rejecting apps that require user registration first. The publication looks at an email a developer reportedly received from Apple saying:

    Thank you for submitting Read It Later Free & Read It Later to the App Store. We’ve reviewed your apps, but cannot post these versions to the App Store because they require customers to register with personal information without providing account-based features. We have included additional details below to help explain the issue, and hope you’ll consider revising and resubmitting your application.

    Applications cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content; such user registration must be optional and tied to account-based functionality. If you have any questions about this response, or would like to discuss it further, please feel free to reply to this email. We look forward to reviewing your revised apps.

    Leo Laporte's following on TwitterLeo Laporte has an interesting article about how nobody (including himself) noticed when his posts stopped appearing on Google Buzz and Twitter. "It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time," he writes. "I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I’ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing."

    Considering the man has over 222,000 followers on Twitter, it’s pretty interesting.

    Seth Godin announced that his next book Linchpin will be the last book he publishes the traditional way.

    According to the New York Times, the Dish Network will begin offering a video portal called DishOnline.com this week, making it the latest distributor to provide online benefits to paying subscribers.

    TechFlash reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has sold a million Amazon shares for about $138 million. This comes after other Amazon stock sales earlier this year. These sales now reportedly total about $640 million.

    Microsoft posted a developer roadmap to the Windows Phone 7 Launch timing today.