Meatball Sundae

What is a meatball sundae? It's something messy, disgusting and ineffective, the result of combining two perfectly good things that don't go together. Meatballs are the basic staples, the things people need, the stuff that used to be marketed quite well with TV and other mass market techniques. The topping is new marketing: MySpace, websites, YouTube, and all of the magic that CEOs wish would shine atop their companies. The problem? New marketing is lousy at selling meatballs. When confronted with the myriad opportunities presented by new marketing, people usually ask 'How can we make this stuff work for us?' This, as Seth Godin explains in his remarkable new book, is exactly the wrong question. Mapping out 14 trends that are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer - and by extension transforming what we make and how we make it - Godin shows how the question for any thriving 21st century business must be: 'How can we alter our business to become an organization that thrives