Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin - Review

What is the ideavirus? It is a new perspective on word of mouth advertising and marketing. Godin poses a different viewpoint about competition within his well written lines. The inherent metaphor is about hive consciousness.

Who is Seth Godin? He's a former writer who worked for Yahoo, but resigned after writing his first book, The Tipping Point

Why would anyone leave such a high profile post as a Yahoo news writer? Read this review.

At first I am able to compare the following ideas to past experience, and concepts given in a spiritually focused meditation group. More than one of our guest speakers made reference to the cooperative essence of beehives.

The esteemed notion of hive consciousness became the dizzying part of the read for me. The difficulty arose in attempting to make the leap from the higher consciousness category to the financial marketplace.

My preconceived notion about the business world was that it's a scary jungle rife with errant headhunters ready to attack. Spine chilling references to dog-eat-dog scenarios have always turned my knees into jelly.

In terms of the Internet, Godin describes a revolutionary, new way to do business in the virtual world.

As manufacturing of tangible goods diminishes, the marketing of ideas fills in the gap. Everyday people then become an intrinsic necessity in this new process of doing business.

Invasive marketing techniques are rendered useless. Loud commercials and the mute button on the remote should be a clue to rude aggressive marketers. In this way, T.V. networks become old dogs in need of learning new tricks..

When an internet entrepeneur helps someone else, the benefits are multi-fold.

There's no departure from the self motivation of making money. This is not an altruistic endeavor as embraced by my meditation group. Folks can be self serving, and benefit others at the same time.

Unleashing the Ideavirus explains the fine points of this new marketing concept. In its entirety, the concept is based on using people for advancing and promotion. It's a millisecond rendition in the form of word-of-mouth advertising.

Godin coins the term "sneezers". The sneezers pass the virus on to others electronically. There are two kinds of sneezers. One is promiscuous.

An example of promiscuous sneezing showed up in a New York Times Article about trading private info in exchange for a $.37 coupon. When Burger King asked for email addresses of ten friends, many dumped the addresses of their friends with no qualms. A sneezer with a conscience would have asked his friends first.

All in all, the gist is not to market at people. Market for and with people, instead. Unleashing the Ideavirus is a challenging, dynamic read - highly recommended.

Click here for part 2 of review