Are you really willing to offer a Meatball Sundae?

If you are in the mood for a digestive-provoking challenge to any conventional in-the-box thinking you might be indulging in, then Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae: Is your Marketing Out of Sync? might just be the gastronomic metaphor to burp you out of your apathy.

I've enjoyed Seth's prolific writing on contemporary business and marketing to date (his books include Purple Cow, The Dip, Small is The New Big, Permission Marketing and All Marketers are Liars) -- his titles say it all. He is a pesky gnat, buzzing around the eyes of lofty business folks and nipping at the soft skin of smug corporate marketing departments.

Meatball Sundae is his latest provocation, challenging the tendency businesses have of latching onto the latest marketing fads and throwing them into the "marketing mix", without a sound understanding of this "new marketing" is all about.

It seems that the latest trends of blogging or online social networking strategies (all the so-called Web 2.0 marketing strategies that constitute his idea of the sundae's whipped cream, sprinkles and cherry topping) are being layered onto a very traditional business structure (the meatball "scoops"). The result -- not at all appetising, and quite illogical.

Seth identifies 14 trends that he deems highly significant for business and marketers to be watching and responding to. Here is a short summary of the 14 trends in "Meatball Sundae" written by Lori Deschene of bnet:

"1. Direct Communication with your target market - there is a trend towards an increase in direct communication between producers and consumers. More feedback mechanisms are appearing.

2. Amplifying the Voice of Individuals - power to the people. Everyone has become a critic. This can be a good thing. Viral is all the rage.

3. The Idea of having an Authentic Story - Seth mentioned the fact that there are scraps of material out there and the need for having an authentic story to tell.

4. Lack of Attention Span - have we trained people to have shorter attention spans? Seth reminisced about the fact that in the 40’s commercials used to be 30 minutes long. Is the 30 second spot still an efficient way to educate potential prospects and consumers about your product and services? Just how successful are those Super Bowl commercials anyway? So long as the ads generate revenue, does it matter?

5. All About the Long-Tail - we’ve discussed the long-tail of Search Engine Optimization on numerous occasions. There is a definite trend towards long-tail and providing a choice for people.

6. Outsourcing - there is a definite trend towards outsourcing. Seth pointed out that “… it can be easier to change the manual than to change the people…”

7. Google and the Other Search Engines are “atomizing” the World - Seth also touched on the fact that bundling (all of your services) may not and does not always work.

8. Infinite Channels of Information - a.k.a. creating noise. I like to call this “touch points” or interception points. This creates the elimination of a bottleneck as you should build and create your own channels (and no I’m not talking about Yahoo Pipes).

9. Consumers Can Talk Directly to other Consumers - power to the people being able to communicate directly with each others.

10. Shift in Scarcity and Abundance - stuff that used to be abundant is now scarce and vice versa.

11. Big Idea can reach a large number of people - a big idea is something that changes the world or the big idea’s direct environment forever.

12. Shift of How Many to Who? - This is huge as “who” has become much more important than “How Many”. Mass marketing is seeing a transformation.

13. Identification of who is wealthy and who is not - you cannot always predict who is who.

14. New Gatekeepers and No Gate Keepers - you’ll have to read the book for more on this."

It may seem somewhat mystifying reading someone else's brief summary (I had a hard time creating one as I was listening to the book on audio while exercising!), but I'm hoping it will pique your interest enough to make you want to buy the book for whatever stage of business development you are in. If you are going to be in a "meatball" mass market business, don't kid yourself that "new marketing" will be your ticket to fame and fortune.

On the other hand, if you have something special, targeted and desirable to offer, then serving a totally yummy sundae, icecream, toppings and all, might just the right thing for your business!