Seth Godin - This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See

[a sketch to show you whats to come]

Marketing is all around us. From your very first memories to the moment before you opened this book, youve been inundated by marketing. You learned to read from the logos on the side of the road, and you spend your time and your money in response to what marketers have paid to put in front of you. Marketing, more than a lake or a forest, is the landscape of our modern lives.

Because marketing has been done to us for so long, we take it for granted. Like the fish who doesnt understand water, we fail to see whats actually happening, and dont notice how its changing us.

Its time to do something else with marketing. To make things better. To cause a change youd like to see in the world. To grow your project, sure, but mostly to serve the people you care about.

The answer to just about every question about work is really the question, Who can you help?

• Marketing seeks more. More market share, more customers, more work.

• Marketing is driven by better. Better service, better community, better outcomes.

• Marketing creates culture. Status, affiliation, and people like us.

• Most of all, marketing is change.

• Change the culture, change your world.

• Marketers make change happen.

• Each of us is a marketer, and each of us has the ability to make more change than we imagined. Our opportunity and our obligation is to do marketing that were proud of.

Thats what most people seem to care about. How big a brand, how much market share, how many online followers. Too many marketers spend most of their time running a hype show, trying to get just a little bigger.