Seth Godin on Marketing, Meaning, and the Bibs We Wear

On good days, Seth Godin thinks about all the progress we’re making on climate change. On bad days, he thinks about the problem of racing bibs. Though pieces of paper safety-pinned to runners’ chests seem obviously outdated, the bibs persist, highlighting how difficult it can be to change a culture for the better. And yet Seth also persists to improve the culture around marketing and work, giving hundreds of talks, writing daily blog posts, and publishing 21 best-sellers. His latest, The Song of Significance, explains why workplace culture has gotten so bad and what leaders can do to make it better.

Seth joined Tyler to discuss why direct marketing works at all, the marketing success of Trader Joe’s vs Whole Foods, why you can’t reverse engineer Taylor Swift’s success, how Seth would fix baseball, the brilliant marketing in ChatGPT’s design, the most underrated American visual artist, the problem with online education, approaching public talks as a team process, what makes him a good cook, his updated advice for aspiring young authors, how growing up in Buffalo shaped him, what he’ll work on next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. 

Recorded May 23rd, 2023

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Photo credit: Darius Bashar and Archangel