Salt Lake City – Popular digital-marketing blogger and author Seth Godin spoke to a packed Grand Ballroom at the Omniture Summit 2010 Thursday morning, telling the audience that “the industrial era ended on your watch.” Now, Godin said, “We are at the forefront of a revolution.”
Godin’s premise was that the days of the CEO throwing around money to “fix marketing” worked for a really long time, but making and selling average stuff to average people is a thing of the past. “We can’t own the media, and we can’t make any more stuff,” he explained, “and we can’t go back to counting eyeballs, conversions, and ratings. If your job is just to keep the factories busy, then you’re going to fail.” A different way of thinking is called for, he said. “We created a system that was based on the premise that buying stuff makes people happy, so buy more stuff. That no longer works,” he said.
It’s all “personal” now, Godin said: “People cannot be bought and sold. Ideas that spread win. The only growth left involves people to follow and believe in. It’s personal. Connect people, lead people, and do something different. You have to not be boring. Break the rules. Say, ‘Follow me.’”
Godin suggested that today’s digital marketers must solve a problem in a way nobody has solved it before, using all available information and data at their disposal. Traditionally, we have rewarded following instructions and not solving problems, which is what has to change. “This is an opportunity, and you’re going to win by doing things fundamentally differently,” he said. “We have to do ‘art.’ What we need to do as artists is find places to do work that is remarkable. You have to invent and create value.”
In essence, he explained, interesting, new solutions to problems are what are needed. “How do we solve this interesting problem?” is what today’s marketers should be asking, he said. “That’s what we should be paid to do. Omniture gives you the data, but what are you going to do with it? That’s the opportunity.”
For more from the Omniture Summit, read:
"Adobe CEO Narayen: Omniture Acquisition Brought Together ‘Art and Science’ of Digital World"
"Josh James Opens Omniture Summit 2010 Declaring: ‘This Is The Decade Of The CMO"
