Today Seth Godin releases his new book, Meatball Sundae, in which he questions: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? Here at MarketingProfs, we are lucky enough to be featuring the author himself in a virtual seminar based on his new release, in which he coaches marketers on "how to avoid the meatball sundae."


I recently had a chance to chat with Seth briefly about his new book, below. In it, Godin challenges marketers to sync up their marketing with their products, rather than simply rushing to embrace the shiny and new (like blogs, YouTube, Facebook, whatever). Otherwise, he says, such tactics are "like the toppings at an ice cream parlor. If you start with ice cream, adding cherries and hot fudge and whipped cream will make it taste great. But if you start with a bowl of meatballs . . . yuck!"
In other words, the new tools might be irresistible. But they don't work as well for boring "meatball" brands like Cheerios, Ford trucks, Barbie dolls, or Budweiser. "When Anheuser-Busch spends $40 million on an online network called BudTV, that's a meatball sundae. It leads to no new Bud drinkers, just a bad case of indigestion," Seth says.
Meatball Sundae, according to its publishers, is a guide to the 14 trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don't.
But I think my favorite part is the case studies of the "winners" in this new marketing world, particularly the creatures who have sprouted legs and evolved seamlessly into this new marketing world. Consider Blendtec, a 30-year-old blender maker (with a 30-year-old name) that now produces "Will it blend?" videos that demolish golf balls, Halo 3, iPhones, and Chuck Norris action figure, to name a few.
"For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube," Seth points out.
Here's my quick Q&A with Seth.
Q: So what is a meatball sundae?
A: Well, what's a meatball? It's a commodity, something we need, something made in quantity, something where the cheapest often wins.
And the sundae toppings? They are the whipped cream and cherry, the fun stuff. They are new marketing-- YouTube and MySpace and blogs and Google and the rest.
Sundae toppings work great. Except when you put them on meatballs.
A meatball sundae is the unfortunate combination of perfectly good average products for average people with the exciting growth opportunities of the new marketing. They're a disaster. Not very successful, nor very appetizing.
Q: So what needs to change here? The meatballs? Or what's going on them?
A. I think the solution is to make a choice: either make meatballs, make them really well, accept lower growth and ignore the new marketing or realize that this is a new industrial revolution and get out of the meatball business just as fast as you can. It's the chasm in the middle that'll chew you up.
Q: Which is the way to go, based on your advice in the book?
A: [B]oth ways are fine. But be in sync.
When Henry Ford came along, artisans continued to do fine. But without the assembly line, they couldn't grow to compete. That didn't mean that being Rolls Royce was bad. It was just different. The horrible mistake was to be out of sync, to not match.
My advice is: this is the biggest revolution of our lifetimes. If you want that sort of ride, go for it, but all the way tot he base of your pyramid, not just as window dressing.

Please join us next Thursday and hear Seth in person!