I think this Seth Godin guy is pretty cool.  I’m not a big fan of his nor have I ever read his books, but with nearly 70,000 Twitter followers, numerous speaker series with TED, and 13 books in his media arsenal, I’d imagine he’s a pretty smart dude. 

One of my new year’s resolutions was to read more books.  Well, actually, that’s not really accurate.  My resolution was actually to read books, the word “more” would’ve hinted at the fact that I read books now, which I don’t.  That said, the new Rise to the Top video titled, "The Future of Books, Bookstores, and Publishing" couldn’t have come at a better time. 

I encourage you to watch the video, but at about 15 minutes I realize that might be more of a chore than anything.  So I’m going to talk about what I agree with and disagree with in regards to the video below.

Here we go:

So Seth Godin wrote a new book called “Poke the Box”.  It sounds like a self-help/personal development book about making the most out of your professional experience.  More importantly, Godin has created “The Domino Project” a sort of publishing company that focuses on the following three ideas:

1. The customer is not the bookstore, it’s the reader
2. Books are too hard to share
3. Distribution channels need to change

Here’s what makes a lot of sense:

The competition for books isn’t other books.  It’s blogs, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.  Why?  Because these mediums are free.  If you want to sell your book, you’ve got to structure your price accordingly.  Distributing digitally at say $1.00, guarantees you lose a lot of money.  It also guarantees that more people read your book, and hopefully, more people spread the word.

What I don’t necessarily agree with is Godin’s philosophy of “I want to fail, I want to fail often.”  I want to believe that being nimble, experimenting, and ultimately failing is the way of the future, but for normal companies under normal circumstances, I don’t see how this can happen.  Sure, Godin, who’s being backed by Amazon, can ultimately try new publishing tactics and distribution channels in an effort to change how the system works.  Amazon has the money to do that.  But ordinary companies don’t.

If you want to apply this to an the ad world, it’s as simple as looking at the following quote:

Omnicom CEO John Wren said that clients need to give their agencies the “Permission to fail.”

None of us strive to or want to fail, but because our business is changing so fast, it’s paramount that we as creators and inventors experiment and try new and different things.  If clients give us that ability to fall down once in a while without repercussions, I believe we’ll see more innovation and inspiring work (and we’ll make you famous).  What’s great is that with the fluidity of the digital age, we can do things more efficiently and invent new things.  It’s one thing to develop a $1,000,000 traditional campaign vs. $50,000 or $100,000 program or platform that lives digitally.  So, to all of you Fortune 500 CMO’s, it’s ok to fall down everyone once in a while.  I’ve been telling my kids for years that “Complacency is a four letter word.”

While I love this idea, think it’s amazing in every way, shape, and form; there’s no way it will work unless you’re a Google, Amazon, or multi-billion dollar corporation where marketing dollars can be allocated towards failure. 

I believe in Godin’s experiment in book publishing and I soon hope to be a member of the e-reader generation upon getting an iPad in April.  I want to share books with friends, pay $1.00 for fresh entries, and talk to authors directly through mediums like Facebook and Twitter.  Do I think I’ll ever step in a bookstore?  Probably not.  And that’s the reason I think Godin is on to something.

At the same time, do I ultimately think it will be a success in lieu of the intent to fail?  I'm still not sure where I stand on it.