Standing Out: Seth Godin

After watching a string of commercials during a show, have you ever sat there looking at the television and though, "What were those commercials about?" You just saw them, why can't you remember them? In February 2003, Seth Godin, a blogger and entrepreneur who thinks about digital marketing outlets, gave a talk to TED about standing out. If you have a product that you want to sell, you don't want it to be in one of the commercials that you just forgot.

The problem with the mass marketing approach is that it is pushing "average products for average people" as Seth puts it. If you want your idea to stand out, it needs to be something remarkable, meaning that people actually remark about it.

The key is to sell to the people that are listening, the innovators, because the worst thing you can do is be safe. Seth states, "People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win." No matter how "off the wall" your idea may be, if you can spread that idea around, it will catch on.

Otto Rhowedder invented sliced bread. However, he was too worried about getting the patent as opposed to spreading his idea, so it became a failure. It wasn't until Wonder found a way to spread the idea around that sliced bread became the best thing to compare every other invention against. Silk, a soy milk that doesn't need to be in the refrigerated dairy section, put their product in the refrigerated dairy section. This tripled their sales.