Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus 1 www.ideavirus.com Unleashing the Ideavirus By Seth Godin Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell ©2000 by Do You Zoom, Inc. You have permission to post this, email this, print this and pass it along for free to anyone you like, as long as you make no changes or edits to its contents or digital format. In fact, I’d love it if you’d make lots and lots of copies. The right to bind this and sell it as a book, however, is strictly reserved. While we’re at it, I’d like to keep the movie rights too. Unless you can get Paul Newman to play me. Ideavirus™ is a trademark of Do You Zoom, Inc. So is ideavirus.com™. Designed by Red Maxwell You can find this entire manifesto, along with slides and notes and other good stuff, at www.ideavirus.com. This version of the manifesto is current until September 17, 2000. After that date, please go to www.ideavirus.com and get an updated version. You can buy this in book form on September 1, 2000. This book is dedicated to Alan Webber and Jerry Colonna. Of course. Unleashing the Ideavirus 2 www.ideavirus.com STEAL THIS IDEA! Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus: 1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first). 2. Send them a link to www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves. 3. Visit www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article. 4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket. 5. Print out as many copies as you like. Unleashing the Ideavirus 3 www.ideavirus.com Look for the acknowledgments at the end. This is, after all, a new digital format, and you want to get right to it! The #1 question people ask me after reading Permission Marketing: ÒSo, how do we get attention to ask for permission in the first place?Ó This manifesto is the answer to that question. Unleashing the Ideavirus 4 www.ideavirus.com Foreword The notion that an idea can become contagious, in precisely the same way that a virus does, is at once common-sensical and deeply counter-intuitive. It is common-sensical because all of us have seen it happen: all of us have had a hit song lodged in our heads, or run out to buy a book, or become infected with a particular idea without really knowing why. It is counter-intuitive, though, because it doesn’t fit with the marketer’s traditional vision of the world. Advertisers spent the better part of the 20th century trying to control and measure and manipulate the spread of information—to count the number of eyes and ears that they could reach with a single message. But this notion says that the most successful ideas are those that spread and grow because of the customer’s relationship to other customers—not the marketer’s to the customer. For years, this contradiction lay unresolved at the heart of American marketing. No longer. Seth Godin has set out to apply our intuitive understanding of the contagious power of information—of what he so aptly calls the ideavirus—to the art of successful communication. “Unleashing the Ideavirus” is a book of powerful and practical advice for businesses. But more than that, it is a subversive book. It says that the marketer is not—and ought not to be—at the center of successful marketing. The customer should be. Are you ready for that? Malcolm Gladwell Author The Tipping Point www.gladwell.com Unleashing the Ideavirus 5 www.ideavirus.com ... - tailieumienphi.vn