Now, about the content of the book:

The book is flagging the fact that media is changing and there’s a new generation emerging, a generation with a totally new media behavior. And it’s imperative for the marketing industry to adapt since the traditional means will no longer work in reaching this generation. Well, most of them. The book comes up with a set of tips and guidelines to help traditional advertising and marketing people make their way into the digital era.

• First of all, in order to be able to manage the issues that will arise in the future, everyone needs to have a good understand of each other’s work. There should be a cross-functional effort through which everyone should understand the medium the others in his/her team are working with. Otherwise, it’s gonna be difficult if not impossible to execute a truly integrated campaign, mostly when separate departments are working as one team.

Nowadays, everybody should have an understanding of what digital is all about, be it a writer, a designer, an event manager, a planner. Still, digital specialists themselves need to open up to traditional media and story telling, since theoretically, anyone must be able to take over the other person’s job. An online writer should be able to write a TV script, just like the art director should know how to design a website.

Here, I don’t necessarily agree. I still believe you need specialists in your team, people that worked for years in the field and built their expertise through time. It’s hard for me to imagine that, if a creative gets fired, the planner can easily replace him/her and do the exact same job, at the exact same standards. I do however agree with the statement that everyone should understand the work performed by the other members of the team. It helps you better understand your role in the team, how your performance is affecting others and what’s your contribution to the project/business.

• We live in times where having a passive brand = dead brand. The brand should listen its fans/customers, pay attention to their conversations, observe and gather insights. Ultimately, use those insights to include the fans in the story, give them the possibility to interact with the brand.

The times in which people just listened to a brand is over. A brand must give its users the possibility of interacting with it.

• Interactive doesn’t necessarily imply that it has to be digital. But, digital is most often the best way to execute, to deliver an interactive idea. How can you make people interact with your TV ad or your integrated advertising campaign? How can you make them part of it? How can you transform your website into an interesting tool people will enjoy using over and over again and (most important) willing to share it with their friends?

A brand should insert itself meaningfully into people’s lives by enabling and enriching their existing behaviors, not by requiring new ones.

• Don’t create a Youtube channel, a Facebook page or a Twitter account and then think about what you actually want to communicate through them. Think the other way around. First, find the relevant content you want to communicate to your customers/fans and then choose the most appropriate medium to reach the crowds.

Bottom line: a great useful read. It’s an entertaining book from the first pages all the way to the end. There are multiple real-life examples throughout the book, making it easier for the readers to make the connections and see the applicability of the concepts. The book also features a fabulous history lesson on technology and media, from the birth of the internet in 1969 up to the latest innovations from 2010.

download the free e-book here

I really like the style of the book, very direct and clear. And I will write below couple of ideas that I kept in mind:

Being #1 matters

A lot. Regardless of the field you’re working in. And if you succeed of being no.1, there’s a huge distance between you and the competitors behind you. People settle for less than they could accomplish. And companies make no exception. They settle for ‘good enough’ instead of ‘the best in the world’. Bottom line: if you’re not willing to invest what it takes to be number 1 (work, time, energy) then why bother?

Becoming a Linchpin

Another idea, which Seth writes about also in Linchpin, is the one in which he criticizes the school and the wrong way they use to approach problem solving. For example, and I think this is quite familiar to you too, teachers tell kids that, in the moment a problem gets to hard to solve, they should go further and focus on the next one. Something like: ‘the low-hanging fruit is there to be taken; no sense wasting time climbing the tree’. Exceptional people will not avoid the problems they don’t know how to solve, at a first glimpse. Best people in the world specialize in answering the questions they don’t know. People who avoid questions they don’t know represent the vast majority but, unfortunately (or not, I could say) they are not in demand.

And we arrive at the idea behind the book. There are 2 curves that define any situation we are facing in which we’re trying to accomplish something.

The Dip

The Dip is the long slope between the moment you start something and the moment you become a master at that particular thing. Successful people don’t just get into the dip, buckle up and wait. No, they lean into the dip, they push their limits further and further, they change the rules as they go. The Dip is the place where success happen. People who understand its role and are motivated enough in investing work and energy that would take them through the dip, they will become the best in the world. They will be the exception, because instead of just skipping to the next thing and settle for performances that are just slightly above average, they will embrace the challenge.

Cul de Sac

Cul de Sac (the Dead End) is the situation in which you work and work and work but nothing seems to change. Things remain the same: they don’t get worse but they don’t get better either. Seth’s advice: when you acknowledge you’re in a situation like this, the best thing to to is to quit. Fast. Because a Cul de Sac keeps you from doing something else, investing your time and energy in something much more useful for you.

Quitting ≠ Failing

Strategic quiting is a conscious decision that you take based on the choices you have available. If you acknowledge you’re just standing in a dead end and realizing what you could do instead with your time and energy, quitting is not only reasonable choice, is a SMART one.

2 more things I wish to add:

- a more mature thing to do is to weight the possibilities and evaluate the situation: whether or not you’ll be able to make it through the dip. The wise thing to do is to face the fact you’re not gonna make it and quit beforehand. Choose another dip, one that is more accessible to you. The bad thing that might happen is wasting your time and work and giving up in the middle of it or right just before finishing it.

- I truly believe that you must enjoy your work and the field you’re working in in order to be willing to go further and further, become the best in the world. This would be the fuel that motivates you in pushing, going through the dip, overcome all the obstacles that might interfere with your path.

I warmly recommend you the book. It’s quite thin, only 80 pages, perfect enough for one day read. I will come back later with couple of notes on Linchpin, another awesome book from Seth Godin.

Thanks for reading,

Best of luck!