Godin does it again.  Another insightful book that will get you thinking about how you market.   Tribes are a primal force in all of us.  We long to be part of a tribe whether we know it or not.  Technology has enabled us to be members of many tribes.

Once again Seth Godin captures a point of view and presents it in a clear way that just about anyone can understand. In fact the points made in this book are articulated in such a way that I will be forwarding the book to some people I know that could benefit from understanding the 14 trends that are changing advertising.

A big part of this new book – Meatball Sundae – discusses the impact the Internet has had on Advertising and Marketing. As Godin’s describes it however it’s not the Internet per se that has changed advertising it’s more about how people use the Internet to communicate.

It is all kind of Web 2.0 but his point is that new communications have to be engaging. It’s about stories, not messages. So what is your story?

The Tipping Point has been a significant best seller since its initial publication. Much of this is due to Gladwell’s clear prose and his cogent expression of how change can occur in society – and it would appear that the timing was right on the button: being launched in the late 1990s at a moment when society – through the arrival of internet, mobile phones – began an enormous process of change. It might be fair to say that where our generation regards 1968 as a pivotal year in modern social history – 1997 has produced an even bigger moment of change.

Gladwell’s thesis is that a small idea can spread to become a contagious ‘epidemic’ if it is sticky enough as an idea, and if it is lucky enough to be championed by a good mix of Connectors (people who know a lot of other people), Mavens (people who know a lot about a particular thing or things), and Salesmen.

The Long Tail took form over nearly two years as an “open-source research project” on Chris Anderson’s blog at www.longtail.com. This experiment in book development, where he shared data and ideas in progress and many smart readers helped improve them, fleshed out the theory and stress-tested the analysis, which made the book far better than it would have been if he had worked on it in isolation. It also suggested applications in industries he never expected, from beer to fashion, which has hugely expanded the scope the research.

We are going to try a new thing here on the Thought Sponsor blog. I will be creating posts about a book I have read and then inviting feedback on the book. I’ll be posting two books in rapid succession and then one every few weeks. Think of this as a virtual book club of sorts.

This weeks book is – Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

Good marketers know that customer-centered marketing is mandatory. However, we are not the customer. What the customer perceives as relevant is the thing successful marketers must anticipate, plan, and deliver on. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing offers Persuasion Architecture, a proven Persona-based methodology. Persuasion Architecture enables marketers to anticipate different angles from which customers frame their questions and then coordinate messaging across multiple channels so that marketers can create predictive models of customer behavior.

John Robb believes that business units shouldn’t be larger than what our brain can accommodate within our “tribe”. He thinks 40-80 person units are the optimum size. He found an interesting article from Thinking Managers that seems to reinforce his hypothesis.