There are times, I think, when Godin’s style of short and pithy serves him ill. The other day, he put out a post (which I came across when a friend, a local web designer, shared it on Google Buzz) entitled “But What Have You Shipped?” I don’t typically do this, but the post is so short, here it is quoted in it’s entirety:

Yes, I know you’re a master of the web, that you’ve visited every website written in English, that you’ve been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny.

But what have you shipped?

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?

Go, do that.

The brevity of the post, in particular, is I think what really kills it for me – I wasn’t sure when I read this whether to be inspired or insulted (and there was at least one other who commented with the same reaction).

More to the point of addressing (or possibly refuting) the point Godin makes, there is a whole world of opportunity to be had by being on the real time web and knowing all these things that isn’t available to slower, world-changing "do-ers." In fact, I’d argue that these trendjackers are absolutely necessary for these do-ers. Most do-ers aren’t marketers. They’re coders, executives, engineers, et. al. They don’t have time to look up and know what’s going on every last second because they’re usually heads down.

The friend of mine who shared the post explained that he wasn’t trying to insult anyone who shared it out (including former coworkers who follow him on Buzz):

…we hired a “social media expert” when I worked there, and he stayed with us and worked out of our offices for a few weeks while he charged us a retainer.

When asked what exactly it was that he "did" in order to justify a return on investment, he seemed at a loss for words.

Nothing he did could possibly be translated into any increase in profit or even profitable business contacts, because he mostly taught you how to piggyback on existing communities rather than monetizing anything from them (basically, it became kind of "meta" in that he was teaching a marketing firm how to market themselves, which isn’t what a marketing firm does, they teach other people how to build a tribe of followers that will bring in whatever their business does).

The part that’s truly ironic is that I think he really felt he was justified in doing what he did, but couldn’t understand how to explain it to people who weren’t of his mindset.

For someone who markets, it’s important to be up on the LOLcats, your “Bieber-slaying quotient,” what mudkips are and whether you like them. It’s important to know the nuance of every sub-culture, because each one is a market segment, or represents a piece of a tribe, to use Seth’s language.

That the fellow my friend described couldn’t justify his existence is a failure on his part, but it doesn’t invalidate the know-ers over the do-ers. I do think that Seth Godin probably knows this, but his short blog post style leaves his thoughts on this ambiguous, which in turn leaves room for folks like me to wonder if we were just insulted.

As an aside, fellow SiliconANGLEr Tom Foremski focuses in on aspects of this idea in his “all companies are media companies” concept in much of his editorial, and is a big part of that is “knowing your memes,” so to speak.

Obviously, There’s a Point Where “You’re Just Playing With It”

My friend later in the thread said: “Although after working in this industry for more than four years, I have to say the trend I’m seeing is that places that stay at the very tip of the curve and know exactly what the latest trends are deliver the least output, and vice versa.”

To his point, it wholly depends on the focus of the organization. Are they R&D or blue sky? Are they a code shop? Are they a Fortune 100? Are they a creative shop? Different spots on the curve are required for different organizational types.

I’m pretty sure it was in it was in the movie "Road Trip" the line was uttered: "I can teach quantum mechanics to a chimpanzee. The key is finding a way to relate the material to something he understands."

Marketing, in it’s base form, is teaching a specific point of view about a product, service or brand. The key to the message taking hold is using language that people can relate to. In the past world of Mass Media, this means using broad, mono-cultured phrasing and terminology so as to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The Marketing 2.0 is about appealing to niches. If you’re able to speak a subculture’s language, that signals to them that you’re one of the select few that knows how to speak their language, which means you care about the things you care about. If you care about their meme, they’re more likely to care about what you’re talking about or marketing.

For a real world example: why do you think it is that podcasts have such higher ROI on ads than any other form of marketing and advertising? Amongst other reasons, the advertisers have shown that they care enough to drill down to very specific niches, and almost always the hosts do some sort of live read or product placement in a language their audience cares about, thus making the audience sit up and pay attention to it.

All of these things are things that I’m pretty sure Seth Godin knows, I’m just not sure many people got any of this out of his post.