If you can read a magazine without examining the Absolut ad, or watch TV and ignore the new Gap spot, you may be immune to marketing.
Consumers seem to have built up antibodies against advertising’s traditional techniques. In the New Economy the trick is to make us market to one another. Hotmail, the Macarena, the Blair Witch Project – all examples of good old word-of-mouth, multiplied by billions of momentary connections in the Information Age.
The business writer Seth Godin calls them “Ideaviruses,” mini-trends that can become tidal waves at some unpredictable “tipping point.” Business strategy in the internet environment must be to nurture and launch Ideaviruses – and the products and services behind them. Would you know an Ideavirus if one bit you?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the Ideavirus.