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Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? [Hardcover]

Seth Godin (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
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Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? + Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable--Includes new bonus chapter + Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Godin's latest business handbook (after Small Is the New Big and The Dip) revisits some of his most popular marketing advice, while emphasizing that it can't just be applied willy-nilly. In past decades, he says, companies were able to get rich by making average products for average people, but those markets have long since been sewn up; mass is no longer achievable [or] desirable. Rather than simply rely on mass media to raise product visibility, New Marketing treats every aspect of interacting with customers—including customer service and the product itself—as an opportunity to grow the organization. In order to be successful with such marketing techniques, a company must change its practices across the board. Otherwise, you're just putting whipped cream on a meatball. Godin has a perspective on everything from blogs (don't bother unless you really have something to say) to the long tail (if it's as valuable to your company as the top sellers are, why aren't you paying more attention?). His arresting conversational style is sure to once again set the business world talking. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Godin…is a clear-eyed visionary with strong and sensible ideas on how the new economy can, should and will function."—Miami Herald (Miami Herald )

[Godin's] arresting conversational style is sure to once again set the business world talking. - Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly ) --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1st Printing edition (December 27, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1591841747
  • ISBN-13: 978-1591841746
  • Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #77,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Seth Godin
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
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Before Advertising, there were hundreds of thousands of companies. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
meatball sundae, new gatekeepers
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Marketing, Old Marketing, Josiah Wedgwood, United States, Yellow Pages, New York Times, Murder Ink, New Media, Ralph Lauren, Sick Puppies, Business Week, Tower Records, Super Bowl
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Customer Reviews

58 Reviews
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30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Buy a copy of Meatball Sundae for your boss*, December 26, 2007
This review is from: Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? (Hardcover)
When I deliver keynote speeches and run seminars at companies, I am often asked for advice on how to convince the bosses that the new rules of marketing really work. Frequently people say something like: "My bosses make me prove ROI before I can do this online thought leadership and viral marketing stuff."

My cynical answer is: "What's the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?"

But then I suggest that people to ask their boss if in the past few months, they've made a product or service decision based on a direct mail piece they received or based on a TV advertisement. (Almost no bosses have). Then I say they should ask their boss if in the past few months they've used Google or another search engine to make a product or service decision. (Virtually all bosses have).

Well now I have something else to suggest. Buy a copy of Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? for your bosses.* Tell them it is an important book. Meatball Sundae will be your tool to help others in your organization to understand what you already get and what you are eager to implement. It will help you to get the buy-in to do the new rules of marketing that you know makes sense.

But first your bosses may need to transform your company.

Meatball Sundae lays out in a convincing manner the transformations that are taking place in business today. These transformations mean that everything needs to be looked at carefully, including marketing. But to just toss new marketing onto the top of obsolete business models is like putting whipped cream and a cherry onto meatballs to make a sundae. (Yuk).

Godin tells a story I really like. Josiah Wedgewood, a potter in England in the 1800's at the start of the Industrial Revolution, was the first to create a factory with a production line and job specialization. He built a showroom and shipped product around the world. And he sold bespoke pieces to royalty but first displayed those fantastic and expensive creations for several months so all could see. (Wedgewood was a marketing genius AND a business pioneer.)

Josiah Wedgewood took advantage of changes in society and technology and changed the way business is done, made millions, and founded a company still famous today. But his brother Thomas Wedgewood stuck to the ways that all potters have worked in the past, barely made a living, and is forgotten today.

Godin says fourteen trends are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer. And while these trends are transforming organizations that have the right approaches, they are crippling the organizations that are stuck with nothing but meatballs. Once again, marketing is transforming what we make and how we make it.

* > If you ARE the boss, you should buy copies for your board members and investors...
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Chasing marketing fads without changing your company can results in wasteful mistmatches, January 25, 2008
This review is from: Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? (Hardcover)
If you had a bowl of meatballs and wanted to dress them up a bit before you served them, would you add whipped cream, a sprinkle of nuts, and a cherry on top? A meatball sundae doesn't sound attractive? Seth Godin knows how to write with snappy images to get his ideas across in crisp, concise, and memorable images. The idea of the meatball sundae is used to illustrate old style companies trying to "get with it" by using the New Marketing paradigm without updating anything else. One of the examples he cites is the $40 million Anheuser-Busch spent on Bud-TV to add zero new customers. I am not qualified to judge the appropriateness of the effort or what Bud was after, but I do agree with the author that the goal of all marketing, in the end, has to be to create more customers.

The book has three parts that each consists of multiple short sections that focus on aspects of the topic under discussion. Part 1 is "Thinking About the Meatball Sundae" and takes us through the history of marketing in the US and how it has gone through several upheavals and how those who got their marketing in synch with the new realities won.

Part 2 is "The Fourteen Trends", which discusses the realities of the New Marketing.
They fourteen trends are:

1) Direct Communication and Commerce Between Producers and Consumers
2) Amplification of the Voice of the Consumer and Independent Authorities
3) Need for an Authentic Story as the Number of sources Increases
4) Extremely Short Attention Spans Due to Clutter
5) The Long Tail
6) Outsourcing
7) Google and the Dicing of Everything
8) Infinite Channels of Communication
9) Direct Communication and Commerce Between Consumers and Consumers
10) The Shifts in Scarcity and Abundance
11) The Triumph of Big Ideas
12) The Shift From How Many to Who
13) The Wealthy Are Like Us
14) New Gatekeepers, No Gatekeepers

Part 3 is "Putting It Together" and Case Studies. The Case Studies are short illustrations of how these principles and trends support success or how failure results from ignoring them.

The book is a pleasant read and geared towards those trying to get a handle on what is happening now in the marketplace, especially to entrepreneurs thinking about their marketing efforts. It is written with energy and without academic jargon.

You will know if this book is for you. That is, if you are writing checks for marketing programs for your company, this book is for you.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Meatball Sundae? Yup. Old Marketing Strategies Could Give You Indigestion, December 30, 2007
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? (Hardcover)
This is perhaps Seth's finest work to date. Make no mistake. I'm a Seth fan and for good reason.

Seth makes it easy for non-marketing guys like me (a corporate filmmaker) to grasp the deeper meaning of this "Web 2.0" thing and connect to those who are as passionate about a subject as I am.

So what does this have to do with organizations trying to get a handle on New Media Marketing? Perhaps everything.

Most organizations are stuck marketing widgets/stuff/services/meatballs by sprinkling some whipped cream and cherries on top...blogs/pods/wikis/...and hoping for something remarkable.

Seth proposes new marketing doesn't demand better marketing. It demands better products/services/organizations.

Organizations should start with a product/service/widget/meatball worth talking about and new marketing tactics will enable your story to spread that much faster.

Is your organization stuck serving "meatball sundaes?"


Thomas Clifford
---Corporate Filmmaker
http:///www.DirectorTom.com
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Candy
I am like the proverbial kid in a candy shop! New to the world of marketing and finding myself having to make my own way in it, I find the journey one of the most enjoyable and... Read more
Published 7 months ago by M. Swanton

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read for Those Interested in Internet Marketing!
If you are, or planning to, market your product or service on the Internet you have to read this book. Read more
Published 9 months ago by John R. Sedivy

4.0 out of 5 stars Odd Metaphor, GREAT BOOK
Meatball Sundae is a resource to share the differentiation factor between "old marketing" techniques and "new marketing" techniques. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Lori Gertz

3.0 out of 5 stars It's a poorly written book with great ideas
I am a fan of Seth Godin's writing, but this book seemed like a mish-mash of truths and half-truths. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Nidish Kamath

4.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into staying on top of trends
A business and Marketing must read. Good case studies. Good insight with the 14 trends, starting with "Direct Communication". Great insight into staying on top of trends. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mark Deo

5.0 out of 5 stars Your future success is dependent on your ability to understand what's in this book!
Do you know how a REALLY funny movie becomes EVEN FUNNIER every time you watch it? That's similar to how I feel about "Meatball Sundae" (and all of Seth's material)... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Douglas Haider

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy guide to new marketing in the new media
The title of Seth Godin's new book is an immediate tip-off that he knows how to grab your attention. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Rolf Dobelli

4.0 out of 5 stars Fresh perspective on new media marketing trends
Most high school geometry students understand the concept of congruency, which manifests as a close interrelation and correspondence between two different quantities. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Rebecca Clement

5.0 out of 5 stars another must read from Seth Godin
a great read on how your marketing should work in sync with your product or service. it's not necessarily all about technology, just re-looking at your business to make sure that... Read more
Published 20 months ago by John Coley

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Book, but does it work for Architects (I know we're not his primary audience)?
So I've been in the middle of reading a wide variety of books and Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae slips into the business/marketing area of my reading spectrum. Read more
Published 20 months ago by J. Pang

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