How to Avoid the Meatball Sundae

Dinosaurs die...it's what they do best!!!

I just attended an online seminar by Seth Godin at marketingprofs.com and he was terrific. This was in reference to his latest book Meatball Sundae and the idea that commodity companies are screwed. In Seth's words, "they're not organized for the net". They're dinosaurs, he spoke about Gillette and how Gillette could build the flashiest website in the world and people still won't care...

I agree. They build razors...a commodity or "meatballs"...and no matter how many batteries, blades and cool words they use to describe they're meatballs, no amount of whip cream is going to fix that reality...would you really spend more than 3 seconds at this site??? The fact that I'm talking about it at moment notwithstanding, who cares? My question is not the 3 seconds at the site...my question is who do they expect will go there and for what reason...to count blades...more likely this is a tired marketing team trying to validate their existence along with their flash guru buddies...waste of time and money! AND precisely what dino's do...don't get me started on Sears, GM, Ford...oh the list is long and notorious...

In fact, Dell was on this path too. A "new economy"company fell into a pit of dinosaur goo and today, right as we speak, is still struggling to find it's way out...to their credit they have begun to trudge out of this sticky mess by adopting things like crowdsourcing at ideastorm and blogging like crazy, but most importantly ideastorm provides a place for connecting people and not just any people, their admirers and haters. i myself had a Dell staffer comment here the last time I mentioned them...the first thing is "they're aware" and for a big company that's the place to start. They used to be fast, slippery, slick and mobile, hip and happin...then Michael and team got too big for their expensive britches and forget what got them there...awesome customer service, great prices on great computers built to order REALLY REALLY FAST...now they over charge for memory and upgrades and are struggling to maintain or in most cases re-ignite relationships with their customers...

Remember what happened to Microsoft when Bill didn't buy into the net??? Even the richest man in the world missed the boat...now he's all about connecting people anytime anywhere on any device...

Someone from Rogers asked Seth the question, "how should broadcasters respond to youtube?"

I jumped in and offered that "rogers should look to participate very creatively rather than look to push a traditional marketing tactic on the community..." Rogers may be slightly better organized to respond to this current business revolution than the average dinosaur but marginally in my opinion. They're slightly sexier because of phones that download music for kids but that said, behind the scenes, services, response times things that matter beyond the whip cream on the meatball etc marginally better...this by the way is really where Telus has truly sucked for years and it's why i will never do business with them ever again. Big is usually NOT better.

Here are some really cool examples of guys who get it and I've mentioned them before and Seth mentioned them today.

37signals - brought to my attention sometime ago by my good friend Jeff Ward - his product by the way is cool too. yikesite. threadless is another really cool company that has changed with way people design and buy t-shirts.

So the overarching message of today's presentation from Seth was fairly simple:

Organize for communication
Organize for communication at breakneck speeds...
and don't ask people to call you for example if you can't handle the call volume...
lead creatively by telling great stories rather than pushing tired old last century (TV ad's) marketing tactics via the web with flashy graphics...gillette.

Lead by finding ways to connect people with each other, having them tell a great story, preferably yours...the power has shifted drastically into the hands of the community, what Web2.0 is all about really. The really successful companies today are doing just that.

If you're in the commodity business, i and many others much smarter than me have been saying for awhile now...you're in trouble unless you wake up and reorganize.

For example, newspapers are dead, the old way of waiting for the ink to dry before you find out what's going on in the world.....DEAD and has been for awhile some of them just don't know it yet. Sometime ago i had the opportunity to speak with the owner of a small local in scope type publication and commented about the fact that she was missing a massive opportunity online...she replied that her tech advisor, a writer for the publication didn't see it that way, that he had traveled all over the world and interviewed many people. His conclusion, "there was no money to be made online for this type of business", REALLY, REALLY, (DINOSAUR LEADING A DINOSAUR COMPANY) REALLY WRONG...recently this publication has lost a substantial amount of its key distribution points and now her many decades old business unfortunately is in a tail spin. Unfortunately, this reporter was applying the old school "gutenberg" business model to the online space, of course, he came up short.

I hate to say I told you so...

Dinosaurs die, it's what they do....