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Best selling author and half god amongst marketers Seth Godin keeps proving he has a nearly unrivaled feel for the marketing of today. His latest book, with the obscure title ‘Meatball Sunday’ is about the combination of Old Marketing and New Marketing - 2 great flavors like, but together they end up being a big mess. In his own words: “Don’t use the tactics of one paradigm and the strategies of another and hope you’ll get the best of both worlds. You won’t”. A controversial point of view in a time where we see traditional companies adopt New Marketing models, hoping to reach out.

Seth Describes Old Marketing as the ‘interruption model’ - you interrupt the routines of your customers to grab their attention and tell them about you. New Marketing is using an influential group and let them tell about you. He is not advocating either one to be the preferred model, but warns for the consequences of merging the two. This short review will show you the essential theory the book covers:

How to avoid the meatball sundae effect in Virtual Worlds?

Seths’ answer to this is twofold. The first part is hard to apply to Virtual Worlds, only as part of a broader New Marketing approach: “First, the structure of organizations needs to radically adapt to this new model.” Adjusting your companies formula, or structure sounds very radical for a venture into a virtual environment. I can see this working if you want to really adopt New Marketing, streamlining your information channels and community participation.

“Second, products need to be designed that don’t depend on old-school advertising but instead spread on their own.” This one has been more commonly misunderstood especially by big brands. Don’t expect just because you are Adidas people will flock towards your products in social environments. Creating commotion when you enter a Virtual World will not result in a successful campaign. Make your products remarkable enough to get noticed on their own - then encourage people to tell each other about them and use the network.

Posted on: January 8, 2008 | Share on: