Seth Godin Questions

Tribes Project

1. What is a tribe?
A tribe is a group of people, connected to one another with a leader and an idea. They also need two things to be a tribe, a shared interest and a way to communicate.

2.Identify three qualities of a leader
Leaders use charisma to attract and motivate followers.
Leaders commit to a vision a make decisions based on that vision.
Leaders connect their followers to each other.

3.According to Seth Godin – tribes are the new marketing paradigm. The previous two were factories and mass marketing.
A. Describe these two
Factories are what Seth Godin defines as any place that cranks out a product or service, with measurable output and attempts to reduce costs. He then defines it as almost any job where a boss tells you what to do, and you do it. Mass marketing is an attempt to market a product to many people at the same time but without allowing any of those people to band together to support the project. Mass marketing does not create a tribe, it just puts a message out to a variety of people rather than a tribe of people.
B. Do you agree that this concept of leadership and viral marketing is the “new way”- explain or give an example.
I think that viral marketing is the “new way.” Mass marketing is not as effective today, lets use an example of a television commercial. If Burger King puts out a commercial on 30 different television channels, it is likely that many people will see said commercial, but it will not have as much impact as a viral marketing plan. Now, if Burger King also put a video up on youtube with viral intent, it may be more successful. If 10 people see that video, and send it on to ten other people each, and that cycle continues many times, the video will be actively seen, where people have gone in search of it and will be more likely to remember it. So, in my opinion, if one million people see a tv commercial and one million people see a viral video advertising the same thing, in my opinion the viral video will be more successful because of the effort put in by those million people to see it, rather than it just appearing on the tv. So, relating back to Seth Godin, those million people on the viral video are a sort of tribe, they all communicate with one another to get the video out there.

4.How does Seth Godin think massive change happens?
Massive change happens when the status quo is challenged by a leader. Change happens when the status quo is challenged by someone with a new idea about how to do something that has not changed for a long time. For example, the factory analogy that Godin uses, where a factory job is one where a boss tells you what to do and you do it. Massive change of that involves leaders and independent tribes, changing that workflow and doing the same job, more efficiently possibly. Massive change occurs when a tribe and leader take something that has been done, and finds a new way to do it. An example from the book is the rock climbing competition, where instead of climbing the rock wall like the rest of the competitors, the winner of the competition just ran straight up the side of it. That, is massive change.

5. Why was this book selected for this class?
I think this book was picked because it is all about how to lead people, using a new method. The internet makes so many resources available to create and manage a tribe, and able to connect to millions of people, that the internet will be what we are using in our futures, and this class is all about that. It only makes sense to read this book on how to lead a tribe, if that is what we will be doing in the future of business, after we leave college.