Top 2 Choices by a Marketer or Leader by Seth Godin

Seth is an excellent writer, his daily blog posts seem to have the pulse of what is happening with consumers, marketing, the internet. Click on his name for the full blog post or click on the link here for Seth's latest book Tribes. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

As a marketer or a leader, you have two choices by Seth Godin:

The first is to realize that people will never ever be satisfied with you (ouch), they'll even whine when you give away something for free. Embrace the whining and realize that this attitude gives you an opportunity to answer the question with, "no! Wait, there's more!"

The second is to understand that a hug and a smile from a true friend is it. Along the way, marketers of stuff have tried to offer that stuff as a replacement to the thing that children/consumers/employees/customers/spouses really seek, which is connection and meaning and belonging and love.

Open Table powers through a Dip

Open Table powers through a Dip...I just talked about Seth's Book in my last post...I wanted to review his The Dip blog and just read this jewel about what working thru "The Dip" Means.

Open Table is an online reservations service. It's free to use and the restaurant pays a dollar per diner. The company has raised more than 20 million dollars to date. (original Times story).

During the company's first three years, they booked a million diners (in total). Now, they book two million every single month. Five years ago, they had 1,000 restaurants to choose from, now they have 7,000.

That's what it looks like when you get through the Dip. They're a superstar, the only choice.

How did they know it was a Dip and not a dead end? Because they were selling to an entire market, not just one restaurant (Chez Panisse still isn't a customer). By measuring incremental progress, they could see that the corner was just ahead.

(And a Dip within a Dip--one happy client is Norma's, a hyped breakfast restaurant in NY. Norma's does huge business via Open Table, largely because they come up on top of the breakfast 'bestseller' list. Like most things that get through the Dip, they're popular because they're popular.)