Edison Ade's Key Ideas from This Is Marketing
by Seth Godin

• You aren’t busy enough.
• Your ideas aren’t spreading.
• The community around you isn’t what it could be.
• The people you care about aren’t achieving everything they hoped.

It has to resonate with the listener, to tell them something they’ve been waiting to hear, something they’re open to believing. It has to invite them on a journey where a change might happen. And then, if you’ve opened all those doors, it has to solve the problem, to deliver on the promise.

You have a marketing question, and it’s possible that there’s an answer.

But only if you look for it.

“ Instead of selfish mass, effective marketing now relies on empathy and service.”

Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.

It’s a chance to change the culture for the better.

Marketing involves very little in the way of shouting, hustling, or coercion.

It’s a chance to serve, instead

1. The first step is to invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.
2. The second step is to design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.
3. The third step is to tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market.
4. The fourth step is the one everyone gets excited about: spread the word.
5. The last step is often overlooked: show up—regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years