Meatball Sundae - Seth Godin

I'm working my way backwards through Seth Godin's books. They have all been well worth the read so far. Meatball Sundae is no exception.

Seth continues on a by now familiar, but still revolutionary path describing the death of traditional marketing and more specifically advertising as we know it. Don Draper may finally get what we have all hoped for.
The basic idea behind the book is that shouting at people for attention is not going to win any more. There is too much information and too many ways to get in touch with the people who you expect will be interested in you product.

Instead marketers need to spend time (maybe a lot of time) building a permission asset. Seth lists a variety of examples of companies that have done this to great effect along with others that need to follow his advice.

He never rants - even though the subject could often lend itself it this.

I read an idea of Seth's a while ago that had a great impact on me. I used to consider non fiction books as something from which I had to learn. Get all of the information from this and more on to something else. Build a knowledge base and get some benefit from this in my life. Seth's idea was that books are repositories of ideas. By reading them you are exposing yourself to these ideas. Some stick and some don't. That's really the nature of ideas. It's unlikely that you will agree with every sentiment in all but the simplest of books. So reading non-fiction and self help books is more an act of adsorption than cramming. I like this idea and it has helped me read more broadly and I believer get more benefit from the books that I do read.