Thoughts on Seth Godin’s "Unleashing The Ideavirus"

So it’s my second entry in the “I’m reading all of Seth Godins books in 2018” list and I just finished Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Powerful stuff. Although slightly dated, it’s a must read to help understand the mind of the consumer even more. Although Seth indirectly tackles this issue, it’s one of the themes thats always at the heart of his work: know who you are selling to.

As always, there are a million summaries of the book online but my takeaways are:

1. Its vital to identify the key sneezers in your audience. Sneezers are at the heart of the Ideavirus. They *get* it, then tell ten/twenty/50 people who want to hear from them.Addendum: Sneezers can’t be bought

2. Building on this, the most successful ideas that spread are those that do so because of the customer’s relationship to other customers. Its less about your (the marketers) relationship to the customer.

3. “Traditional” marketing is broken. The sooner we can stop marketing “at” people, and start marketing “with” people the better. Ideally, create an environment where consumers will market to each other.

There is a ton more gold and it’s well worth the read!

Next up: “Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow”