Gotta get me some of that New Marketing. Bring me blogs, e-mail, YouTube videos, MySpace pages, Google AdWords. I don't care, as long as it's shiny and new. Wait. According to bestselling author Seth Godin, all these 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! As traditional marketing fades away, the new tools seem irresistible. But they don't work as well for boring brands (meatballs) that might still be profitable but don't attract word of mouth, such as 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. Meatball Sundae is the definitive guide to the fourteen 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. The winners aren't just annoying start-ups run by three teenagers who never had a real job. You'll also meet older companies that have adapted brilliantly, such as Blendtec, a thirty-year-old blender maker. It now produces Will It Blend? videos that demolish golf balls, coke cans, iPhones, and much more. For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube. Godin doesn't pretend that it's easy to get your products, marketing messages, and internal systems in sync. But he'll convince you that it's worth the effort.

How to match the right marketing approach to your product, by legendary business thinker Seth Godin. The shiny new marketing technique isn't necessarily the right one to use. According to bestselling author Seth Godin, these new-fangled tactics can be like the toppings at an ice cream parlour. 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! As traditional marketing fades away, the new tools seem irresistible. But they don't work as well for boring brands (meatballs?) that might still be profitable but don't attract word of mouth, such as 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. Meatball Sundae is the definitive guide to the fourteen 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. The winners aren't just annoying start-ups run by three teenagers who never had a real job. You'll also meet older companies that have adapted brilliantly, such as Blendtec, a thirty-year-old blender maker. It now produces 'Will it blend?' videos that demolish golf balls, Coke cans, iPhones and much more. For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube. Godin doesn't pretend that it's easy to get your products, marketing messages and internal systems in sync. But he'll convince you that it's worth the effort.

Bestselling business author Godin delivers his most far-reaching and provocative book, explaining what works in marketing these days, what doesnt, and what to do about it.

The must-read summary of Seth Godin's book: "Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?". This complete summary of the ideas from Seth Godin's book "Meatball Sundae" shows that sometimes when you mix two good ideas, you can come up with something incompatible. A meatball sundae sounds entirely unappetising, even though in and of themselves meatballs might taste nice and ice cream sundaes taste good. In his book, the author explains that the same thing is happening in marketing today. Think of traditional marketing vehicles as being like meatballs. Many successful companies have been built from the ground up using conventional marketing strategies and techniques. When these companies try and add in the new marketing devices like social networks, blogs, Google and all the other interesting stuff, it doesn't work. Added-value of this summary: • Save time • Understand key concepts • Expand your knowledge To learn more, read "Meatball Sundae" and find out how to make the right combinations and start making superior ice cream sundaes.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller In this iconic bestseller, popular business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin proves that winners are really just the best quitters. Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip. Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac—a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart. Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you’ll earn profits, glory, and long-term security. Whether you’re an intern or a CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you’re in a Dip that’s worthy of your time, effort, and talents. The old saying is wrong—winners do quit, and quitters do win.

“My favorite book of the year.”—Doug McMillon, CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Harvard Business School Professor of Strategy Bharat Anand presents an incisive new approach to digital transformation that favors fostering connectivity over focusing exclusively on content. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education. Drawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy. Success for flourishing companies comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers’ connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors’ best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole. Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves. Praise for The Content Trap “A masterful and thought-provoking book that has reshaped my understanding of content in the digital landscape.”—Ariel Emanuel, co-CEO, WME | IMG “The Content Trap is a book filled with stories of businesses, from music companies to magazine publishers, that missed connections and could never escape the narrow views that had brought them past success. But it is also filled with stories of those who made strategic choices to strengthen the links between content and returns in their new master plans. . . . The book is a call to clear thinking and reassessing why things are the way they are.”—The Wall Street Journal

Part of the Greatest Hits series, Marketing Greatest Hits by Kevin Duncan is an essential resource which utilizes a effective dual approach to mastering the best ideas of modern marketing: the first ten chapters give in-depth examination of critical topics, followed by quick summaries of the most talked about and thought-provoking work from the best business books published, including The Long Tail, Meatball Sundae, Buzz, Affluenza and Blink. The book will help you stay up-to-date on how to navigate the ever-changing landscape of marketing and distills an enormous amount of information on the best ideas and insight into memorable digests which will enable you to finally cross off “must reads” from your business reading list.