Seth Godin – Master Charlatan Volume 2
To continue on with my series on ridiculous blog posts from Seth Godin I give you his latest blog post ?Tribe Management?.?Here?s an excerpt:
Brand management is so 1999.
Brand management was top down, internally focused, political and money based. It involved an MBA managing the brand, the ads, the shelf space, etc. The MBA argued with product development and manufacturing to get decent stuff, and with the CFO to get more cash to spend on ads.
Wow talk about stereotyping. I?ve worked with brand/marketing managers for 20 years now and I can tell you that this is not where it?s at. Just yesterday I spoke with a brand manager about setting up a blog and how they could leverage their brand identity through via internal and external branding strategies.
Let me tell you what brand managers really do and why Seth Godin is a Master Charlatan (in my humble opinion):
1.???? They develop a company?s brand identity, brand promise and brand strategy (still very chic as far as I know?so 2008).
2.???? They implement an internal branding program to get employees involved with the brand so they become brand ambassadors (probably still cool in 2008 as far as I know).
3.???? They choose the best strategies and tactics that obtain the greatest ROI and leverage their brand identity (I?ve personally never sold TV ads as we are a branding company not an ad agency). TV is so dead.
4.???? As far as I know hiring MBA?s is still a good thing. Smart people still count.
5.???? Brand Managers don?t have a predestined way of spending the budget. Maybe ads are the correct way to go or maybe search engine optimization is. They?re smart or at least should be.
The sad thing is Seth Godin doesn?t really know much about branding. He?s a word of mouth marketing guy. Don?t write about subjects that you are clearly misinformed with. Stick to your spiel about permission marketing, that?s not so bad.
Seth Godin is on a book tour right now. He makes money from selling books. Enough said.
A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money or advantage via some form of pretence or deception.?
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January 31st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Although I love the idea of “tribe management” (and aren’t those people called leaders?), I see what you’re getting at. And I’m not saying you’re doing this just for attention, but coming out and taking a whack at Godin’s ideas certainly gets attention.
Be careful with the word charlatan. You’re engaging in name-calling, which may not especially reflect will on you. I mean, seriously, do you think Seth is deliberately deceptive?
January 31st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
LOL, I meant to say “reflect well on you”. You know, like how correct spelling reflects well on you.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
This time I went down the same road as you did with a slightly different angle. See my new post:
http://brandmix.blogspot.com/2008/01/branding-straw-men.html
I also emailed Seth to ask him what it is with him and beating up MBAs. It seems very Marxian (Groucho) considering he has one.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am
I think that sometmes Seth is full of crapolla and has no idea what branding really is. And yes I think he’s a charlatan. But that’s just me…a branding guy.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:08 am
Seth Godin:Charlatan of Branding Word-of-Mouth?
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I would have to argue that you’re stereotyping as well. Regarding points 1 through 5, my response is, “not always.” Some brand managers do their job correctly and some do it poorly. Maybe your experience is to the former, but I have met some really terrible brand managers in my time.
Also, it’s impossible to call Seth a charlatan because that would imply he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and since most of what he talks about is marketing and promotion, and he does a fantastic job of marketing and promoting himself (which is his main priority), I’d say he knows what he’s doing. therefore, not a charlatan.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
I can’t be sterotyping becuase that’s what brand managers are suppose to do. Now if they don’t do it correctly then it doesn’t matter if you agree with me or Seth. They’re just bad employees.
On the charlatan front we’ll have to agree to disagree. Any great charlatan has believers otherwise they wouldn’t be a charlatan. If you believe what Seth is preaching that’s cool. I don’t. I think he’s great at packaging up old ideas and turning them into his own to sell books. I believe in branding because I know it to be true.
But that’s just my humble opinion as a branding guy.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in branding just like any good marketer should. I just think there are better ways to do it than others like there are better brand managers than others. Where we probably disagree is on some of the branding tactics, but that’s a whole other conversation.