Seth Godin may be a marketer, a best-selling author, public intellectual and founder of successful web sites, but when asked for a description, he came up with "ruckus-maker." The Buffalo native was in town for a sold-out talk to the Advertising Club of Buffalo held at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center Auditorium Thursday evening.
Godin spoke about his leading-edge work in modern marketing. He told marketers that they don't have the upper hand anymore in a world with an almost infinite number of information options for people.
Instead, Godin talks of interruption marketing and permission marketing. Godin said it's all part of a world where people are on a journey although to where isn't clear.
"I don't think we ever had a real idea of where were were going. I mean, if you look at the drawings in Popular Science, we were going to have flying spaceship cars and robots in our house by now. I think that we have seen for 400 years is once people have enough food, then what they want is some things that make their lives easier and then what they want is connections...they want to belong to something...they want to matter," said Godin.
Godin said that's why teenagers travel in groups and why cell phones are so important in keeping them in that group and having friends and contacts.
