This is Marketing: Review

I read a lot of books by Seth Godin over the past couple of years. I like his style of writing – a mix of simple yet profound sentences that often leaves you with food for thought. It is not fiction, it is mostly business advice, but he started and made his name as a marketing guru. So just after finishing his The Practice (which is for artists than for small business – his normal audience), I got my hands on his original bestseller – This is Marketing.

Honestly, it changed my views on what I thought was marketing. I have spend a lot of time with marketing folks in my corporate careers as an analytics consultant, and I found most of them being the advertising and creative types, who seemed to get a kick out of formats and colors and layouts, and such things, which many mistakenly called brand marketing. But what Seth convinces you in this book is marketing is not that. And that is what stays with you. It sounds a bit idealistic at times, but as the main inventor of Permission-based marketing, his arguments are very sound. If only all of marketing was what he says it should be. Nevertheless, it is great writing and as always, I have made notes of the book and posted them on this blog.

But as a reader, here is my short review of this book that I posted on Amazon:

Turns marketing on its head

Before I read this book, as a writer, I always thought marketing was all faff. Who ever thought that marketing was to be of service to your own small viable audience in order to change them? That too with empathy and understanding of the worldview of your audience? But that’s what this book taught me about marketing. Especially as a writer with almost an unsaid disdain for all things marketing as I had experienced them, this turned it on its head. Maybe I will try apply some of the things Seth mentions and see. But from this reading, I must say I like marketing as Seth defines it. Thank you.